Philip Rothman mentioned a Scoring Notes post, Quick tip: Move notes up or down chromatically, from 2014, which you can read at https://www.scoringnotes.com/tips/quick-tip-move-notes-up-or-down-chromatically/.
I made some comments there about some plugins that did similar things, and I would like to share my comments here.
*************************************
This is cool stuff, Philip - thanks for exposing it to the open air!
I have done a lot of related things with plugins, and here are some notes about things that relate to this post.
In the bleak days before Move Up Chromatically & Move Down Chromatically were available, the downloadable plugins Raise Chromatic Pitches and Lower Chromatic Pitches could be used to accomplish the same task, and these could be assigned to keyboard shortcuts using File > Preferences > Menus and Shortcuts >Plug-ins.
These plugins were introduced in Sibelius 4, but they did not really come into their own until Sibelius 5.2, due to various Sibelius bugs and ManuScript limitations. Here is some of the description of the plugins, from the plugin download page:
***********************************
“Raise Chromatic Pitches raises the pitch of any selected notes by 1 half-step (semitone). Lower Chromatic Pitches lowers the pitch of any selected notes by 1 half-step. The note spelling (such as C# vs. Db) is determined by Sibelius. It should be comparable to what you would get if you entered the same pitch on a MIDI keyboard.
These are intended as a chromatic replacement for Up and Down Arrow, which move pitches diatonically. Typically, one would assign each plug-in to a shortcut key so it could be run with a single keystroke. Please be aware that if you assign shortcuts to plug-ins and download more plug-ins, the shortcuts will shift to different plug-ins and you will need to reset them. (Edit - this has been fixed in the most recent update when run in Sibelius 5.2)
Warning: unlike Up and Down Arrow, these plug-ins cannot move individual notes within chords. If you select any notes within a chord, all the notes in the chord will be moved!
(Edit - this has been fixed in the most recent update when run in Sibelius 5.2)…
Articulations and Live Playback data are retained in the moved notes.”
************************
Sibelius 4 was the first version of Sibelius where a plugin could modify articulations. It was not until Sibelius 5.2 that a plugin could tell which notes in a chord were selected; before that it knew only that one or more notes in a chord were selected, so it would change all of them!
If you are using Return to respell accidentals, be aware that if you are in a key that includes double accidentals (such as some harmonic minor or ascending melodic minor scales), Return will never produce a double accidental.
To get around that, you can run the plugin Respell Accidentals Allow Doubles, which will toggle through the acceptable spellings of a note, including double accidentals. This is another plugin that calls out for a keyboard shortcut.
Finally, if you are interested in changing, for example, a piece in a major key to a minor key, the plugin Transform Scale (which has shipped with Sibelius since version 5) can do all sorts of interesting things, let you change from the original scale to a different mode, or a blues scale, a whole tone scale, and a bunch of other things. You can find it in the Transformations plugin menu, and here is the description of the plugin from the Sibelius Reference:
**********************
"Transform Scale
Changes pitches in the current score from their current scale to a new scale, e.g. to change the modality of a melody from major to minor, or change a pentatonic melody to use the whole-tone scale, and so on.
To use the plug-in, select the passage you want to transform, and choose Note Input > Transformations > More > Transform Scale. A dialog appears in which you specify the current scale of the music and the new scale into which you want to transform it. Snap non-scale tones to scale tones determines whether the plug-in should “snap” a note that is not in the scale to the nearest note that is in the scale (e.g. Eb is not in the scale of G major, so you can choose whether the plug-in should leave this pitch unchanged, or “snap” it to the nearest note that is in the scale, e.g. D). Make your choice, and click OK.
The plug-in has many further options, which you can see by clicking Show Options in the dialog that appears:
* Define additional types of scales by clicking Add/Edit Scales
* Save and retrieve transformations you use often by clicking Save/Restore Map
* Determine the direction in which Sibelius should transpose the notes when transforming the scale by clicking New Pitch Higher?
Each of these dialogs contain detailed information on its use, and the plug-in also has a Help button that displays further details."
*****************************
--
Bob
An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2018.
For plugin lookup and categories see https://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install |
5.x - 2018.x: Post on Scoring Notes Quick tip: ... - Bob Zawalich, 16 Feb 09:29PM
Re: 5.x - 2018.x: Post on Scoring Notes Quick t... - Bob Zawalich, 16 Feb 09:34PM
snap1.png