Transpose / Shift Images pane

Transpose / Shift Images Pane

If the Score Structure panel is not already visible on your screen, choose Score Structure Panel... from the Tools menu to make it visible.
If the Transpose / Shift Images pane (which contains the tabs: Transpose, Shift <->, and Map Pitches) is not visible in the Score Structure Panel, select Transpose / Shift Images from the Available Panes pull-down menu at the top of the Score Structure Panel.
Choose between the three tabs in the Transpose / Shift Images pane to view controls for Transpose, Shift <->, or Map Pitches.

Transpose Tab

The Transposition pane is used for transposing selected notes up or down by a specified interval.

Select the notes you want transposed. If you want to transpose an entire instrumental part, use the Select Score tool to select the staff from the first to the last measure. Choose the direction of transposition (up or down) and set the transposition interval either by moving the Interval slider or by setting the From Key and To Key sliders. The interval name is displayed below the Interval slider. Click the Transpose Interval button.

NoteAbility performs correct interval transposition (unless the new note does not exist in which case an enharmonic is used.) This means that when an F# is transposed by an augmented 4th it becomes a B# and when it is transposed by a diminished 5th it becomes a C natural. Likewise a Gb transposed by an augmented 4th becomes a C natural, and when it is transposed by a diminished 5th it is a Dbb.

If you want to transpose a passage and change the key signature, you must perform the two tasks separately; one with the Transpose tab view and one with the Key Signatures tab view in the Clef & Key Signatures pane. In the example below, the two steps are shown - first the passage is transposed up a Major second, then the key signature is changed from C major to D major.

Original:

Transposed up a Major 2nd:

Key Signature changed to D major:

The Alter Playback Only button can be used to transpose the playback pitch of selected notes The appearance of the notes is not altered by this button. The transpose playback feature is useful in situations where the displayed pitch is not the correct playback pitch. An example would be where octava or octava-basso symbols are used, or where a transposing instrument has been used for a portion of the score. To use this feature, select the notes to be altered, set the transposition interval and direction and click on the Alter Playback Only button.

To cancel the playback transposition, select the notes and use the Cancel Playback Transpose menu item in the small pull-down menu located in the top-right corner of the pane.

- Since stem direction may change during transposition, some graphic slurs and other images may have to be adjusted manually.

Shift <-> Tab

The Shift Images pane is used to shift images in your document either to the right (i.e. to greater measure numbers) or to the left (i.e. to lesser measure numbers).

To adjust the position of images, you can either place the Entry Cursor at the beginning of the passage to be moved (and choose the All Images From Cursor radio button) or select the images to be moved (and choose the Only Selected Images radio button.) If you are shifting all images from the cursor, then you will be moving all the images on all staves beginning at the Entry Cursor and ending at the end of the score. You must also set whether you want the images shifted to the right or to the left, and check whether you want the images that already exist in these measures to be cleared (otherwise the shifted images will be merged with the images already there). Next, set the distance (in quarter note beats) of the shift and click on the Shift Images button.

- the positions of inserted clefs are NOT shifted with the music, so you should be cautious when shifting music that includes clef changes. In these cases, it might be better to cut the passage, remove the clef changes, paste the passge at the new location and re-enter the required clef changes. The results of shifting a passage with clef changes by 2 beats to the right is shown below:

Map Pitches Tab

The Map Pitches pane is used to perform non-linear pitch transformations on selected notes.

This was added to the NoteAbility Inspector at the request of composer Stephen Dembski. This pane allows selected pitches to be transposed to other pitches in a non-uniform way. The series of source and destination pitches are listed in the two text fields, and the direction of transposition is set by the arrows. (Clicking the arrow switches its direction). The pitches are entered as pitch class values 0 through 9 with 10 as either "a" or "t" and 11 as either "b" or "e". Using this notation, C is 0, C# or Db is 1, etc.

Notes with the corresponding pitch class values in the first row will be transposed (in the direction of the arrow) to the pitch class values in the second row when the Map Pitches button is clicked.

The Calc Direction button is used to automatically set the direction arrows to the smaller interval. (EG. A pitch mapping from "0" to "9" will have a downward direction while a mapping from "1" to "5" will have an upward direction

Menu items

The pull down menu located at the top-right corner of this pane contains menu items related to transposition.

Cancel Playback Transpose

remove the playback transposition from selected notes so that the correct pitch is played.