 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: mikeW
Date: 2019-08-25 06:00
Hello,
Does anyone have the bass clarinet part for the Midsommarvaka, transposed from bass clef in A to treble clef in Bb? It looks like I'll have to play this on fairly short order and my transposing chops are not what they should be. Thanks, Mike
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2019-08-25 06:15
I could do it for you from a crisp PDF file format. Get in touch off-line
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Author: tdufka
Date: 2019-08-25 08:21
This is something I would like to learn to do, and it would be great to know your work flow when transcribing bass clef to Bb treble clef, and which software you are using.
Also, I am not sure what a "crisp" PDF file format is.
Thanks!
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2019-08-25 17:34
I use a scanned PDF of any music to make an interim file to import to Sibelius.
The sharper and cleaner the scan is, saves time correcting the original file used by Sibelius. In Sibelius, changing clef and transposing music is fairly easy.
Just a warning, Sibelius is not an easy program to learn and has many quirks that have to be 'worked around' to get results. I think it was designed for pop music uses, so classical music results suffer.
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2019-08-25 18:13
I think it was designed for pop music uses, so classical music results suffer.
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This is not really true. Plenty of "classical" works have been engraved in Sibelius, which has been used by Schirmer and Boosey for quite a few modern works.
I just engraved a new edition of some songs by Charles Ives for Peer/Southern and they requested Sibelius.
Any of the major applications (SCORE, Finale, Sibelius, Dorico) are capable of producing professional output. There are also Lilypond and Musescore, if you don't have the big bucks to purchase commercial software.
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2019-08-25 19:14
>>Plenty of "classical" works have been engraved in Sibelius
Of course, but the user has to use a lot of tricks to get there, and I have made nice results also.
I don't have the expensive version and that version would be a must if you are a serious composer/arranger.
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Author: Bennett ★2017
Date: 2019-08-25 21:00
Just a little more on 'crisp PDF' The cleaner and better the original - high contrast, no pencil marks, conventional note shapes - the better the scanned version will be turned into something Sibelius, Finale, etc. can use that will require little manual editing.
These programs convert the meaningless lines, black marks and squiggles into something that can be edited (and transposed). The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process is somewhat akin to OCR of text - the conversion of a picture shaped like 'the' becomes the editable characters t h and e.
A circle resting on the top line after OCR conversion ='s a whole note G.
A # shape after OCR becomes a sharp sign.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-25 22:14
Ken Lagace wrote:
> Just a warning, Sibelius is not an easy program to learn and
> has many quirks that have to be 'worked around' to get results.
> I think it was designed for pop music uses, so classical music
> results suffer.
> ...the user has to use a lot of tricks to get
> there, and I have made nice results also.
Ken, your take on Sibelius's intended market (pop music) is interesting. You may be right. But I am intrigued (and feeling a little bit validated) by your comments. Perhaps like you, I was an established Finale user when Sibelius first came out. It seemed to me it was being directly marketed at Finale users (working in whatever style) because, the pitch went, it was more intuitive with a much less difficult learning curve, more like standard word processing for language. Finale supposedly involved too many menus.
There were enough teachers in my school district who started using Sibelius that, to maintain compatibility with them and others with whom I had to share files (this was before musicXML and each program had its proprietary format), I felt forced to buy a copy of Sibelius 1.0 (which I've since upgraded as far as v.5). I could never figure out what was so intuitive about it - it seemed to me (and still does) that, as you say, you have to trick Sibelius into things or, at the very least, spend time digging into the docs to find out how **to override the defaults** that Sibelius (at least through v.5) just assumes everyone who knows anything will want.
I kept running back to Finale because I felt it was **easier** to control, chalking it up to "proactive interference," as they called it in my ed-psych class centuries ago (it seems) - having learned to do things one way in Finale, I was having difficulty learning and remembering how to do them the Sibelius way.
I digress, for which I apologize.
Karl
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-25 22:20
Bennett wrote:
> Just a little more on 'crisp PDF' The cleaner and better the
> original - high contrast, no pencil marks, conventional note
> shapes - the better the scanned version will be turned into
> something Sibelius, Finale, etc. can use that will require
> little manual editing.
One caveat - the individual music OCR programs that produce the preliminary files (usually nowadays music XML) to import into Finale ,etc. have their own sometimes finicky requirements for resolution and the compression method used in writing the pdf. So it's often easier to scan using the OCR program's interface, which is already aware of its own needs, than it is to scan with your computer's or your scanner's native scanning interface.
Karl
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Author: Chris_C ★2017
Date: 2019-08-25 23:24
An interesting package to try is Audiveris, which is a free open-source project.
It will scan from most formats (PDF, TIFF, JPG,...) into MusicXML. I've had mixed success with it - when it works it is brilliant, getting all the markings correct as well as the notes. However, it doesn't always work, and I've never really worked out what features of the original trigger the success or failure.
Then I use Finale PrintMusic, which is the cheap edition of Finale, to read the XML and transpose.
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2019-08-26 00:06
it seemed to me (and still does) that, as you say, you have to trick Sibelius into things or, at the very least, spend time digging into the docs to find out how **to override the defaults** that Sibelius (at least through v.5) just assumes everyone who knows anything will want.
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Karl, I don't think this is the place to get into a detailed critique of your assessment (although I would be happy to do so in a more appropriate forum such as Notatio), but I think it is unfair of you to judge the usability of an application based on a version that is more than ten years old.
BTW, I have no connection to Sibelius or Avid (other than being a user) and to be honest, it's not my first choice of software anymore.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-26 00:23
rmk54 wrote:
> but I think it is
> unfair of you to judge the usability of an application based on
> a version that is more than ten years old.
>
You're right, of course, if the current version is being discussed. I made a point of giving the version I was referring to, although now that I've just opened my copy of Sibelius to check, it turns out to be v.7.13, two versions more recent than v.5, which I mentioned. The subsequent versions have been regularly updated under their annual subscription plan, so you're right in suggesting that I don't know how Sibelius Ultimate (8?) - the current version - works. I apologize if I seemed to be disparaging the current Sibelius, which I don't use or own. I was reacting to Ken's earlier comment only because my reaction had been so similar to his when I last tried to use it.
Karl
Post Edited (2019-08-26 00:33)
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2019-08-26 03:10
They have a different versioning system now. The latest is 2019.5, I believe (which is what I use).
That being said, I remember doing a few large projects (including a few method books for timpani and percussion which are still in print) in version 1, which came out in the mid 90's, and don't remember having to resort to "tricks".
Maybe what one person refers to as tricks are another person's advanced techniques. Would you refer to an alternate fingering as a trick?
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-26 06:05
rmk54 wrote:
> Maybe what one person refers to as tricks are another person's
> advanced techniques. Would you refer to an alternate fingering
> as a trick?
It's been awhile, but I remember having trouble positioning expression marks, changing staff spacing, moving measures from one system to another, changing note spacing, setting system margins - all things I was able to do quickly in Finale with drop-down menus or draggable handles, if I didn't like the default choices Sibelius made for me. It may well have been lack of experience with Sibelius - I've already said I gave in and ran back to Finale quickly because I had things I had to get done, usually on deadline, and the techniques had become second nature for me in Finale. My complaint at the time certainly wasn't that Sibelius wasn't competent, powerful notation software, but rather that the sales hype emphasized its greater ease of use and more intuitive user interface compared **directly* with Finale (which had its own learning curve that I had already climbed). However powerful its features were at the time, they were not so obvious to an inexperienced user, and the UI bore no resemblance I could see to WYSIWYG word processors like MS Word.
But you were right in your first post - this isn't really the place for a discussion about Sibelius vs anything else. I was just reacting to Ken's comment. I probably shouldn't have.
Karl
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Author: tdufka
Date: 2019-08-26 22:41
What would be the best software for simple transcription, say from a jazz standard in concert C to Eb, or from bass clef to Bb, that doesn't involve a long learning curve? I dabbled in Finale years ago with little success, and don't need to write a symphony, just some transcription and notation of a few melodic ideas.
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Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2019-08-26 23:24
As I can tell (I haven't tried too many music editing programs), They are all close to the same - big learning curve. If you have dabbled in Finale, you might as well continue with it. You are already ahead of the game. Other software you would have to start from scratch.
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Author: rclennon
Date: 2024-02-06 00:36
Did you end up finding or making a transposed to B flat copy? I have been charged with playing this piece on a B flat instrument as well...
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