When I make a selection of several bars of music, the time signature change I have among that does not get copied along with it. I know of the workaround of pre-inserting time signature changes, but I wonder if this has been able to be addressed yet. Thanks, all!
Use the System Track. It’s what it’s there for!
I too have been tripped up by the fact that using the system track selects a subtly different selection of items compared to other methods of selection. I guess it is akin to Sibelius’s old distinction between a passage selection and a system selection, but without the visual clues. (Except, of course, that the time signatures don’t light up, which you can notice only if you happen to have one on the screen at the time.)
Hey, I am having a similar issue here and wanted to comment and follow up what you mean by using the system track? I tried highlighting the music I want to copy with the mix meters, and I highlighted the system track (orange) and copied and pasted it, but the time signatures did not copy over.
Was a time signature explicitly in the selected range? It won’t pick up a prevailing time signature (i.e. intuit what the last time signature was and implicitly add a copy of it to your selection). For example, if you select bars 2-5 but the time signature was at the start of bar 1, it won’t be selected.
You can temporarily input a time signature at the start of the selection, or later once you’ve pasted the material (assuming you wanted to copy music along with the time signatures). Select More also works on time signatures.
I think I know what’s going on because it’s a frequent frustration for me. To copy and paste a passage with the time signatures, you have to copy everything on every staff.
After you highlight the measures in the System Track, you have to click the box at the very end of your selection to highlight all the contents of those measures. There is no way to copy only the contents of one staff along with the time signatures. You have to copy everything and then delete what you don’t want, or use a filter and make two copy-paste operations (which is a bit tedious).
1 Like
This does work, but the whole process is incredibly and unnecessarily tedious,. There should be a simple solution of copying time signatures and time signatures WITH notes that don’t involve all of this. This is non-intuitive.
See Leo’s post #2 above.
1 Like
But that is NOT what you are asking for. You appear to want all the time signatures, but only some of the notes.
As others explained, it is a totally trivial exercise to copy all the time signatures and all the notes, then delete the notes you do not want to keep. And BTW this will also keep all your local time signatures perfectly in order.
Not quite. What I really want is to be able to copy an entire region and when I paste it have it include the time signatures. Dorico, for whatever reason, will just paste the notes using the time sig that is present at the paste insertion point. This makes no sense. If I have a region that is, say, going between 7/8, 4/4 and 5/8, then paste it without doing anything else, it just pastes the notes (likely all in 5/8 if that was the last measure) and reflows them accordingly. Honestly, why would I, or anybody else, want that? Be default. In other words, it should select everything, including time and key signature changes. Yes, I would like to be able to select just time sigs—which should be a filter option.
I understand the workaround and have implemented it. But it’s awkward and time-consuming, not to mention hard to remember.
Try to (after having made a selection with the system bar) activate insert mode, before pasting: all time signature of the pasted passage are there as in the original, even if you had other time signatures (they will be pushed to the end eventually).
I understand what you’re looking for but I don’t think this is likely to change any time soon.
Dorico can copy/paste anything(?) that it can select, which doesn’t always include time signatures eg if you’re copying a bar mid-flow.
I don’t know if this is a great explanation but the time signatures are just grouping the notes into bars visually - the music is still separate on the inside. If you’re copying a passage that is two bars long in 4/4 then you’re copying 8 beats worth of music.
If you then paste these 8 beats of music, it will paste into whatever time signature you’ve already got and regroup/rebeam the notes to match the meter e.g. if a dotted crotchet now spans a barline it will convert it to a tied note etc.
This makes sense to me but I can see why you’re running into trouble and getting frustrated.
(The “workaround” is not a workaround). Time signatures are system objects (like tempo marks, chord symbols, repeat barlines etc.), notes are not. There are many situations where you would not want to copy system objects along with the notes, and yet other situations where you would. Dorico gives you the possibility to do either.
Furthermore, having made a system selection, you can use the filter to deselect items you do not want to copy (eg. all the notes, if you just want to copy a skeleton structure!).
I’m sure it only feels awkward and time-consuming because it is unfamiliar. Soon it will feel quite natural and you will wonder why no one thought to do it like this previously.
3 Likes