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Alternate Key Signatures for Transposing Instruments

One thing we take for granted with music notation programs is that, for transposing instruments in a transposing score, the software automatically displays the correct key signature and transposes by the appropriate interval.

Most of the time, we don’t have to think about it. Both Sibelius and Finale will even, by default, “wrap” the key signature of the transposing instrument to prevent unnecessarily complex or remote key changes, ensuring that, for instance, an Alto Sax playing in the concert key of B major will display the key signature of A flat instead of a very unusual G sharp.

Occasionally, though, we need to display an enharmonic key signature other than the one the program chooses. Consider a B flat Clarinet playing in the concert key of E major. Both Sibelius and Finale will show the transposed key as F sharp (6 sharps), but we may want the key instead to be G flat (6 flats). Here’s how to do it:

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Creating a New Score from Transposed Parts in Finale or Sibelius

Q: I’ve got a chart with just the parts and I’m re-constructing a score. I want to enter the notes as they are without going through transposing. Is there a way to just enter the notes onto a transposed score? It seems like there must be an easy way to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks . . .

A:  I’ll walk through the steps for creating a score from an existing set of printed parts in both Finale and Sibelius. You can create a new score from existing transposed parts in either program, but as you’ll see, one notation program has a clear advantage in this particular area.

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Create a score without key signatures for some instruments in Finale

There is a convention in Classical music to display certain parts chromatically, without a key signature, in a piece where the other instruments show the key signature – technically a mix of tonal and atonal staves, for lack of a better term. Timpani, Horn and even Trumpets are sometimes found notated chromatically this way.

Copeland, Stravinsky and Holst are three well known composers that have followed this convention for some of their works.

If you are using Finale 2014 or later, support for Keyless Scores is now built in; you no longer have to change transposition manually.

But how does one create a score which shows key signatures on some staves but not on others in Finale 2012 and earlier?

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