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Topic: enharmonic spelling - again (Read 8103 times) previous topic - next topic

enharmonic spelling - again

This subject has been raised several times over the years. Noteworthy has improved, and it's getting tantalisingly close with 1.75, but it's still not there.

In minor keys particularly the spelling of the accidental is often different from the key signature - for example, in D minor, the key is flat, but the most common accidental is C#, and the spelling of Db makes no sense at all.

The "audit enharmonic spelling" function favors either all flats or all sharps and toggles between them. That's great for D minor if C# is the ONLY accidental, but as soon as you add anything that needs to be flattened, it's a problem. I've been working with a piece in C major, but with frequent accidentals C#, F#, G# and Bb (most common), so no matter what spelling I choose, I still need to go through and manually correct 150 bars with 12 staves. This is a very simple search and substitution issue, something computers are very good at and humans are notoriously bad at.

I had hoped that the new FIND function would help, but I couldn't find a way to search for "any C#".

Why can't the enharmonic spelling function have an option to specify "preferred spellings"?

Re: enharmonic spelling - again

Reply #1 –
Often an asterisk (*) is used as a wild card in search expressions.  To look for any C#, first find a C#, select it, and copy it to the clipboard.  Go back to the beginning of the line and press Cntl/F, choose "By Expression", and paste your clipboard in the box.  Change it to look like:

Note|Duration:*|PitchPos:C#*|Visibility:*

With that expression you accept any duration as well as any octave and visibility attributes.  Alas, it won't find any C#'s which are a part of a chord.

You can press F3 to "find next".

HTH
Since 1998

Re: enharmonic spelling - again

Reply #2 –
To find any C#:

|PitchPos:*C#*

Re: enharmonic spelling - again

Reply #3 –
The find option has simplified this a lot - it's an aggravating and time-consuming problem if you're working from midi files. Perhaps someday the "user defined key signatures" could be used to affect the enharmonic audit - so that the default pitch for the leading tones in D minor and G minor could be sharps.
 

Re: enharmonic spelling - again

Reply #4 –
> |PitchPos:*C#*

Aha! Thanks, I'd tried the leading wildcard, but not with the trailing wildcard as well.

NoteWorthy Online - Any comments about being able to specify preferred spellings (I found an entry I wrote to this forum in 1997 in which you hinted that you were working on such a feature).

What about a global search and substitute?

Either feature would plug this rather frustrating hole.