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?

If the staff you want to display chromatically is non transposing, it is straightforward, particularly if you set it up in advance. I’ll use Timpani as the example here.

fin-staff-attributes-independent-key

Go into the Staff Attributes dialog for the Timpani staff, and check Independent Key Signatures. OK the dialog.
Now select the Key Signature tool, and specify C major as this staff’s key signature through the end of the piece.

fin-key-sig-c-maj

If your instrument is transposing, there’s an additional step, but still fairly straightforward, as long as you are setting the staves up in advance of note entry. I’ll use Horn as the example:

Go into the Staff Attributes dialog for the Horn staff, and check Independent Key Signatures.
Now, select the Transposition button, and set the transposition Chromatically up a Perfect 5th.
OK the Transposition dialog and also the Staff Attributes Dialog.
Now select the Key Signature tool, and specify C major as this staff’s key signature throughout the piece.

But what if you have already completed your note entry, and need to change the staff from showing a Key signature to Keyless / Atonal after the piece is completed? Remember, we not only have to get the proper notation display, we also want the file to play back correctly.

At about this point, even hard-core Finale jockeys start to wish for a proper Chromatic / Keyless staff transposition feature in Finale. Here are the steps for a non-transposing instrument like the Timpani:

Go into the Staff Attributes dialog for the Timpani staff, and check Independent Key Signatures.
OK the Staff Attributes Dialog.
Select the Key Signature tool.
Specify C major as this staff’s key signature throughout the piece.
In the Transposition Options of this dialog, choose “Hold Notes To Original Pitches Chromatically”.

For the situation where you need to show no key signature on a transposing part after the fact, e.g. after the note entry has been completed, *and* it needs to play back correctly, here are the steps (I’ll use Horn):

Go into the Staff Attributes dialog for the Horn staff, and check Independent Key Signatures.
Select the Transposition button, and make sure that Transposition is set to Key Signature (F) Up a Perfect 5th
OK the Transposition and Staff Attributes Dialogs.
In the Key Signature dialog, your choice must match the Key of the Instrument itself. For Horn, set the Key Signature to F Major, from measure 1 through the end of the piece.
In the Transposition Options of this dialog, choose “Hold Notes To Original Pitches Chromatically”.

Note that chromatic transposition holding to original pitches is a destructive edit to the actual data in the staff. My recommendation would be to save a copy of the original file with the key signatures, in case you need to edit the existing material in any significant way at a later point.

Some modern pieces have both sections with atonal keys and sections with key signatures.You can apply the above techniques to specific regions using Staff Styles. However, remember, any time you change a keyed staff to a keyless staff after the fact, the transposition that occurs in the key signature dialog to “Hold Notes To Original Pitches Chromatically” is a destructive edit, so it’s always best to set the file up in advance this way before doing any note entry whenever possible.