Before I unleash my Dvorak arrangement (see Friday’s Going to America post), I need to check the range I have assigned to each part is playable. Fortunately, it turns out there is a tool in Musescore which can be used to assist. An ambitus is a way of indicating the range of a part and it turns out you can drag that control from the Lines palette onto the clef at the start of a part to show what range it spans.

I’ve also discovered another useful feature – concert pitch. Not being fluent in multiple transposing instruments, I find it hard to figure out the harmonies created when you have instruments working in Bb and Eb as well as C. It could be harder – Dvorak’s original score has clarinets in A and various instruments in E as well – but it would be nice if it could be easier too. It turns out there is a concert pitch toggle at the bottom of the page so I can easily view the whole score at concert pitch, which will help with the range adjustments the ambitus indicates I might need to make from place to place.