117: Key signatures - enharmonically equivalent key signatures in different staves

In Sibelius 2 (or later), you can create different key signatures in different staves simply by switching on the One staff only option in the Create > Key Signature dialog. If you haven't yet got the latest version of Sibelius, get an upgrade.

In Sibelius 1 (in which this option is not available), the following procedure may be useful.

You can use a pitch-bend MIDI message to mimic the effect of a transposition change on a particular staff. Therefore, you can use a combination of pitch bends and transposition changes to work around some of Sibelius's current limitations in handling unconventional key signature combinations. This procedure isn't elegant - and it does have side effects - but it may provide useful a workaround depending on your needs.

Imagine you're writing a passage for flute and harp in B major, and for technical reasons you want the harp to be written enharmonically in C-flat major, without making the same change to the flute:

• Enter a key signature of B-flat, which goes by default to all staves.
• Create a Transposition Change such that Written C sounds as C-flat and apply it to the flute staff.
• Create a Transposition Change such that Written C sounds as B and apply it to the harp staves.
• View the score as a transposing score (Notes > Transposing Score, or the equivalent toolbar button or key command).
• If you don't have perfect pitch, you may find the result at this point satisfactory, but your score will sound a semitone lower than it looks. To remedy this, add the pitch bend message ~B0,96 to each instrument at or before its first note.

The side-effects of this procedure include:

• The lowest note in the range of each instrument will now be flagged as out-of-range, although you can redefine the range of each instrument if this really bothers you;
• If you use the pitch bend as above, then you can only bend up an additional semitone before you hit the top of the normal bend range (the solution to this problem is complex).

Answer supplied by Paul Nauert.