Klarinet Archive - Posting 000050.txt from 2009/04

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] funny trills, was Glissando vs. portamento (question for
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:51:36 -0400

Peter Gentry wrote:
> I don't know anyone who can tell the difference between E and Fflat although
> strictly (I think) they are from different keys. Sadly my ears cannot tell
> them apart.

Well ... they can differ (or not) depending on musical context and the
instrument being played.

What I think has happened in the case Sean describes, though, is that
the composer, writing a score in concert pitch in Finale or Sibelius,
has written a trill between D and Eb -- that is, a D with a flat trill
over the top.

The computer program will automatically transpose the notes for the Bb
clarinet part, but doesn't know that the trill indication also needs to
be transposed because as far as it's concerned the trill is just a line
and some text. So what _should_ be an E-F trill (concert D-Eb) winds up
being written as E-Fb.

It's one of those little buggers that crops up in notation when people
start assuming the computer does everything for them automatically (or
when computer programmers take simplistic approaches to more complicated
musical structures).

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