# Trills



## Dorsetmike

I'm trying to rearrange John Stanley sonatas from flute and strings in PDF format to flute and harpsichord; I first used PDF to Music software to produce a MIDI file which I could import into Finalé.

My questions;
is the trill always between the base note & up 1semi-tone or might the accompanying note(s) have any relevance say base and semitone down or whole tone up/down?

playing the PDF to MIDI version sounds awful, is there anyway that could be read as a trill?

Is my edit about right?

from original








from PDFtoMIDI








My edit







Ooops, looks like I need to redo the last notes of the 3rd staff, not quite as Stanley original

I'm also having fun(?) converting up to 6 string staffs into harpsichord left and right hand; I started using Finalé Print Music, but then found out that the full Finalé has a tool they call Explode & Implode
highlight 2,3 or more staffs select Implode and you have a single staff of chords. The explode works to split a staf of chords into separate staffs. So far I'm working with the trial version, I have set myself to do all 14 sonatas, hopefully I can do it withing the 29 remaining days of the free trial version, otherwise the upgrade is $200

I do also have PDFs of the original John Stanley scores from IMSLP, however, being hand written, the computer does not recognise them plus it's figured bass which is a foreign language to me.

The arrangements I'm working from for opus 1 are all various solo instruments with string BC, the Opus 4 are various solo instruments with harp BC which latter should be a bit easier.

When complete I'l be looking for someone to perform &/or record them and maybe upload to youtube.


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## Taggart

In the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach lists a number of these signs together with the correct way to interpret them.










He calls a trill a shake and starts on the note above in typical Baroque style. See also http://www.oldflutes.com/articles/classicaltrill/index.htm for some discussion of the trill up to 1820.


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## Dorsetmike

Problem for me is no shake line just _tr_ above a note.


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## Taggart

Tr or shake sign - all the same. Trill in baroque starts on the *scale *note above the written note *not *a semitone above unless the scale note *is* a semitone. It may finish with a turn to make it smooth - see the second reference which uses the tr sign but talks about shakes.


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## Dorsetmike

Thanks for that, got the page from oldflutes.com bookmarked, probably print it out.

I've since found that the sonata is in D minor which could well explain the C# and F# that frequently appear, I'll also need to re-edit quite a few of the trills.


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## Dorsetmike

Just to throw in a bit of confusion I just found this page
http://www.jennifercluff.com/flutetrills.pdf
which would appear to be more relevant for the Stanley sonatas published in the 1740s, one thing it does mention is that interpretation could change depending on the period it was written in, the page linked in your post above to oldflutes.com refers to 1750-1820.

Methinks I might initially do one movement with each alternative, see which sounds best.


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## Zolaerla

I highly recommend you check out MuseScore, which is free, can import from MIDI (it does it differently from Finale), supports MusicXML, can merge multiple lines, and do trills (mostly) properly:
https://musescore.org/en

They make their money by having a pay service to upload and share all of your sheet music, which seems backwards to me (free software, pay to share? ok), but I've had way more success transcribing with it than other similar software I've tried.


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## Dorsetmike

I've been using Finalé for quite a few years, started with the "entry level" package and gradually upgraded. I think I'll stick with it now, don't fancy another learning curve at 84.


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