Showing key signatures as accidentals

Showing key signatures as accidentals

Music with complex key signatures (e.g. B major and Db major) may be hard to play some times, especially for young musicians, who tend to forget all the sharps and flats. Here's a tutorial that shows how you can output the key signature as a lot of accidentals. All sharps/flats are removed from the key signature and put on each single note that is supposed to have an accidental.

As a simple example, we have this melody in B major:



All instruments have their own complex key signature here. What we will have to do, is to change the piece into C major, and then change each instrument's transposition.

To start with, display the piece in concert pitch.



Now, select the "Key signature" tool on the toolbar and double click at one of the staves. The "Key Signature" dialog box should pop up:



Use the scroll bar to change the piece into C Major. In the "Transposition Options" section, choose "Hold notes to original pitches" and choose "Chromatically" in the list box. Now, press OK. You will see that all key signatures are C major, and accidentals have been placed to compensate.

Now, uncheck "Display in concert pitch". As you can see, the transposing instruments still have key signatures. We want to remove those too.

You will have to repeat the following process once for each transposing staff you have.



Select the Staff tool on the toolbar. Double click the staff you want to remove the key signature from. Click the "Select..." button on the right side of the "Transposition:" checkbox. The "Staff Transpositions" dialog box will pop up. the "Transposition" option is set to "Key signature" by default. This option will automatically add sharps or flats. Select the "Chromatic" option instead. The same transposition option should appear here as in the "Key Signature" option. Just click OK. Now, repeat the process for all the transposing instruments.

In the end, we will have this result:



You may also use the Mass Edit tool's transposition tool to transpose some parts up or down a diminished second. (We could have done that with the clarinet part, for example, to make the E# an F and the F# a Gb)