Neutral key

A piece in neutral key displays no key signature. Instead, individual notes display accidentals as needed.

As far as Finale is concerned, you can create neutral key simply by setting your piece in the key of C. Any note then, not in the C diatonic scale will have its own accidental. A problem arises when you have a transposing instrument, such as a trumpet—Finale will automatically place the trumpet part in D (the usual correct trumpet transposition for a piece in C), instead of in neutral key.

The solution, then, is to avoid using Finale’s automatic part transposing feature for neutral key pieces.

To create a neutral-key transposing instrument part

The idea is to enter the music at “concert pitch” (as though the instrument was not a transposing instrument at all), then correct the key and transposition just before printing.

1. Enter the part in concert pitch. In this case, don’t use the Staff Tool to create an automatic staff transposition.
2. Click the Selection Tool  ; then click to the left of the staff. The entire staff is highlighted.
3. Choose Transpose from the Utilities menu. The Transposition dialog box appears.
4. Specify the interval needed to transpose the notes to their “written” pitches. In other words, if you’re working on a trumpet part, you’d specify Up a Second Diatonically as the transposition interval.
5. Click OK (or press enter).

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