Advice for spelling pitches
Apologies if this is not the right area.
I'm a video game music transcriber, and I have been working on this piece from the 2003 game Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It's a small piece, about 21 bars long (the 22nd bar is my addition), but it seems the composer liked to change tonality every bar or two, which makes it a bit difficult to decide on a tonal centre (and thus, a general key signature for the whole piece). Before, I decided on five-flats (B-flat minor) throughout, but that results in quite a few cancelling accidentals. So the way I've currently arranged the key signatures minimises the amount of accidentals necessary, but is of course is still a nightmare to sight read.
Does someone have any advice for the best way to approach the key signatures and accidentals?
Thanks for your help!
- TheWanderingNight
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| aria_105-premonition.mscz | 33.88 KB |
Comments
This piece is atonal and the keysigs are meaningless. I made all key sigs C, and replaced all sharps by flats for readability using my
https://musescore.org/en/project/enharmonics-replace-chosen-accidentals…
plugin.
aria_105-premonition.mscz
In reply to This piece is atonal and the… by elsewhere
Hi, thanks for your suggestion and plugin. However, I want to digress on a few points:
The piece is, in the narrow sense, not atonal. It does change tonal centres constantly, but it still has very clear tonal centres, just very local ones of about one or two bars each. In the broader sense, you could call it atonal in the sense that there seem to be no overarching tonal centres. However, I think that the local tonal centres shouldn't (all) be obscured by the notation.
Your solution to do away with key signatures is fine and something I did consider, but I don't agree that turning everything into flats necessarily makes everything more readable. I've attached a section where most would agree that spelling with sharps would be more readable than with flats.
In short, I could agree with not using any key signatures (though it seems to me a bit extreme), but only using flats seems to make it less readable than my original solution.
Dear Wandering Knight,
I listened to the piece and I think that you did
the right thing, changing the Key signature every
bar or two. I don't think that there need to be
a single key that the piece is in. It is "wandering"
all through the night! Jeff
In reply to Dear Wandering Knight, I… by jeffcarrollco
Thanks for your reply, Jeff! ;)