Changing the key signature without changing meter

[winkpain]

I have an irregularly mixed meter piece for which I have many changes (over 50) from 3/4 to 4/4, 6/4, etc. All of those Insert meter changes ended up defaulting the Key signature to C at each change. I want to change the key signature to indicate the key of D for the entire piece for appropriate Staff view display maintaining the meter changes.

Is there a way change this for the entire piece in one go without effecting all the desired meter changes?  All I can tell is to go in and edit each one individually. Must a meter change be coupled with a key change?

[Nigel Mackay]

In the Meter/Key view, when you should set your Meter and Key at the start of the project.

Then, every time you insert a meter change, it defaults to the Meter and Key of the highlighted entry. So if you have lots of Meter and Key changes, slect one that has either the Meter or Key that you do not want to change, enter your change and the Measure.

But you must do it correctly right from the start.

Not sure if there is a way to do bulk Key changes.

But with existing entries (in Meter/Key View) you can select them one by one and edit them. It auto fills with existing values, so each entry will have the correct Meter and you can just change the Key.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Nigel Mackay

[winkpain]

5 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

In the Meter/Key view, when you should set your Meter and Key at the start of the project.

Then, every time you insert a meter change, it defaults to the Meter and Key of the highlighted entry. So if you have lots of Meter and Key changes, slect one that has either the Meter or Key that you do not want to change, enter your change and the Measure.

But you must do it correctly right from the start.

Not sure if there is a way to do bulk Key changes.

But with existing entries (in Meter/Key View) you can select them one by one and edit them. It auto fills with existing values, so each entry will have the correct Meter and you can just change the Key.

The strange thing is my first insert meter/key selection, I did insert the preferred  key of the song (D major), but then all the following insert meter/key choices (where I wanted only to change the meter) defaulted to the key of C.  Assuming I could change this in one go later, I let it be. I then found myself unfortunately in this situation. Selecting the existing entries one by one is indeed all I found that I could do.

I'm surprised that I've never run into this before in all these years.

 

 

[Nigel Mackay]

It is strange that it changed the key to C. Does it still do it?

[winkpain]

6 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

It is strange that it changed the key to C. Does it still do it?

Testing with a new project, and no. The key in the Insert Meter/Key box defaults to whatever was last used. So yes, once setting the desired key, that should be what remains for whatever meter changes follow.

I don't know how the C key got into my original project after having set it to D in the beginning. Perhaps a mindless mistake of mine. I then thought CW had defaulted back to key of C and got lazy, figuring I could change it (that is, them all) easily later on.  So it goes.

I do wish that key and meter could be decoupled. It is of course quite common to have many desired changes in one and not the other in a given piece, and a single edit to multiples of them would be nice. BUT that is a feature request low in the ranks even for me.

Thanks for the encouragement and lesson learned!