Be sure that Tenor is selected (it should be) and click Edit Instrument… (click Yes if you get an intervening warning pop-up). You can see for yourself by selecting any bar on the tenor staff, and going to Home > Instruments > Edit Instruments. Again, it’s the instrument - in this case the tenor voice - that is causing the music to be transposed. When you copy music from the alto part to the tenor part, the music transposes up an octave! Surely this means that the octave-down treble clef has a transposing effect? Elaine Gould says as much: “The advantage of not using the octave-transposing clefs is that the clef exchanging is redundant.”īut wait, you say! When you set up an SATB choir score from scratch using the Quick Start dialog, the tenor part uses the octave-down treble clef. Indeed, it is preferable, in my opinion, to not use octave-transposing clefs at all in these types of situations. ![]() This is what is meant in the Sibelius Reference when it is stated that “The fact that a piccolo sounds an octave higher than a flute playing the same notes is an attribute of the instrument, not of the clef (after all, they could both be playing from a plain treble clef).” ![]() Placing the clef in the score had no effect on the music - it was the instrument change that was responsible for the transposition. (This is done by selecting those bars and going to Home > Instruments > Change and selecting Piccolo from the list.) Then I placed the octave-up treble clef by pressing Q to bring up Notations > Common > Clef and selecting the appropriate clef. Notice how I’ve placed the Piccolo instrument change on the second bar (indicated by the hidden rectangular box), and then a return to the Flute on the 3/4 bar. The “treble 8” clef for a tenor is again just a hint to the reader – it’s an alternative to a plain treble clef and has no direct effect on the sounding pitch of the notes.Īll clear, or all confused? Let’s set it up another way, by using this example straight from page 507 of Elaine Gould’s acclaimed notation reference book Behind Bars (highly recommended to all readers of this blog): You can create a transposing instrument like this yourself using Edit Instruments.Ī tenor voice “instrument” in Sibelius is similar – it has a transposition change to make it transpose down an octave both in a non-transposing score and in a transposing score. This is indicated in Sibelius by the fact that a piccolo has a transposition change by default, namely it transposes up an octave both in a non-transposing score and in a transposing score. The fact that a piccolo sounds an octave higher than a flute playing the same notes is an attribute of the instrument, not of the clef (after all, they could both be playing from a plain treble clef). Therefore in Sibelius clefs with or without “8s” (or “15s”) on them are all precisely equivalent. In other words, the “8” is just a hint or reminder to the reader that this is a transposing instrument. A real-life piccolo playing music with a “treble 8” clef would not sound an octave higher than a piccolo playing the same music with a plain treble clef – they sound at exactly the same pitch. Some people write (say) piccolo with a normal treble clef, some with an “8” above (particularly in avant garde scores) – this is a matter of taste. Let’s start with this statement from the Sibelius Reference: ![]() You know, the one about octave-transposing clefs.
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