I’m attempting to create a single 7/8 measure grouped 3+3+1. I found this popover formula, [3+3+1]/8, in one of the threads on the forum, which does produce a measure displayed as 7/8:
I can, after creating the time signature, adjust the two rests’ durations on the first staff to dotted quarters; however, I cannot force a final eighth rest into the measure at all. The same goes for the measure with notes in the second staff- I cannot force the notes to be two dotted quarters with an eighth note rest at the end. Dorico simply reduces one of the other values in the measure to compensate and only allow six beats, not seven. The grid over the measure only shows six beats:
The same thing happens with the standard product 7/8 time signature, although it has a slightly different grouping. It also won’t allow adding a 7th beat to the measure.
I’d be grateful for any assistance. BTW - I’ve already closed and reopened Dorico, and the problem persists. (Windows 10, Dorico 5.1). I wasn’t able to find this issue in my search of the forum.
That’s because there is already a time signature after that one, thus not allowing to add time. Try exactly the same, with insert mode on (global scope). It should behave as you need. And don’t forget to turn insert mode off (I)
Or you should be able to add one eighth of time to the bar by selecting that rest at the end and Shift-B, and +1e into the popover to add an eighth of time.
The reason for this behavior is Dorico is designed to allow you to score films and such, and in that case you may choose to write the ending part of a cue first and then want to write the beginning, and may want to change time signatures earlier in the piece in the process of writing without affecting the synchronization of a point later in the piece where a time signature already exists and is already properly synced with a particular moment in the video (hitpoint) and possibly already has music written. In this case it doesn’t want to disrupt the location of the 6/8 in terms of timing in the piece, so it defaults to making the 7/8 bar shorter and incomplete to prevent the user from accidentally making an edit that would throw off the time sync of the 6/8 bar.
DAW’s have a similar mechanism that allow you to change time signatures earlier in the piece without throwing off hitpoints that occur later, which is a big part of what makes DAW’s much more appealing for film scoring in general than notation programs like Sibelius and Finale and MuseScore, but Dorico does this too.
@MarcLarcher, thank you! I had tried a different flavor of the insert button, but not the global scope insert.
I’m kind of curious why the design decision was made to limit input to the current measure’s rhythmic capacity (in non-insert/overwrite mode) based upon the following measure’s time signature. I’m sure there is a reason, though it seems like an odd choice to me.
Thank you, @Janus, that was informative. I’ve been trying to get through the documentation as well as these forums, and hadn’t gotten to that section yet.
