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transposition problems

I have been having problems transposing staves in a certain file of mine.  the thing, though, is that it fails to work correctly only in that file, or that song at least, but not in any other songs that I've tried.  There's nothing too tricky about this one, it's barbershop so there are quite a few shaps and flats but I haven't had a problem before.

What happens is this:  I have this barbershop song in the key of Bb and I want to shift it up 2 semitones to C.  Now, I haven't done anything special to this song than any other barbershop song in the key of Bb. They all have similar notes flated and sharped; I have a bunch of them, in fact, that are very similar in terms of chord structure and there are certain notes in the tenor, lead, bari, and bass  that are always sharped or flated or made natural. I thought about only making notes flat instead of using the sharp option but when the next note is only a half step up it's easier to read it when you simply sharp the same note instead of write the next note up and then flat it.  Besides, that didn't solve the problem anyway.
What actually happens then is I hit transpose and a small window pops up saying 'Transpose Warning' which says the note it highlighted won't transpose well into the new key (or something along thoughs lines) and it gives the option in most cases to edit the score or proceed with transposition.  Now usually I'll proceed with transposition but then it will actually shift up roughly half the score, or maybe a better indication is it shifts up everything up to the first and second special endings then all the notes after those including the 1st and 2nd boxes don't move up but only get a bunch of double sharps put in front of everything and it doesn't even sound right. I think it transposes it up a semitone too high.  but that is the jist of it.  I hope someone can help.  thanks

Re: transposition problems

Reply #1 –
i go ahead and transpose it then go back and fix whatever chord is screwed up

Re: transposition problems

Reply #2 –
Hi John,
The only times I've seen this is when I've done something screwy to the flow control.

The most obvious thing that comes to mind:
Does the Master Repeat Close in the 1st special ending cause the song to go back to the start?  If so then there may need to be a Master Repeat Open at the start, you can hide it of course so it won't print but it often needs to be there.

I've found that codas can muck up too and it is always because NWC finds the flow control ambiguous [read - I made a mistake :)  ].

Check for "DS" with no "Segno" to go to, "DS al Coda" with no "To Coda" or perhaps no "Coda", ditto for "DC"s.

On the occasions when I've had something like this usually the playback flow actually works but the transpose function gets lost.

Hopefully this is the right track...

Of course, another possibility is that the new NWC2 update has a bug...  I would check the flow control first.
Lawrie

Re: transposition problems

Reply #3 –
Just off the top of my head (i.e., I haven't tried this), it sounds as if the transposition after the flow direction is being made "aurally" but just not being represented properly on visually.  In other words, G becomes Gx, which is the correct transposed pitch A.

Try running a second transposition with 0 as the number of steps, and perhaps try Audit Accidentals.

Re: transposition problems

Reply #4 –
I hate the audit accidental tool! my music involves alot of flats and such so whenever i use the tool I get some of the most a**backwards notation ever.
if your doing barber shop stuff i'd advise against using that tool

Re: transposition problems

Reply #5 –
alot should be a lot
your should be you're
i should be I

...and there are more...

Re: transposition problems

Reply #6 –
Hi Christian,
...whenever i use the tool I get some of the most a**backwards notation ever...

That's odd, I only have issue if I'm using courtesy accidentals (which have a tendency to disappear ;-)  ) and that can be fixed by putting them in as text...

Perhaps you can upload some before and after examples?

Lawrie

Re: transposition problems

Reply #7 –
I've got around a hundred barbershop songs in NWC, and Audit Accidentals does them no harm, except where courtesy accidentals are used (as noted before in this thread).
The only reason that real accidentals would disappear, as far as I can tell, is having no key signature.

Re: transposition problems

Reply #8 –
Audit accidentals removes octave accidentals later in the bar (but the piece still plays back (in)correctly). It also used to remove post tie accidentals before release j.

Re: transposition problems

Reply #9 –
The transpose tool has to simulate play back in order to complete its task. If you have a repeats/flow control that do not play back as you expect, this is likely the cause of problems in the transpose operation. There are repeat*.nwc sample files that can be useful in figuring out how to construct repeated sections in NWC2.