I need to copy and paste m. 186-277 which includes meter changes (4/4, 2/4) to a later place in my music beginning at m. 424 which is 200 empty 4/4 measures. I used the system tracker to select m. 186-277, clicked the checkbox at the end of the highlighted system tracker bars to select the contents, copied and pasted to m. 424. When I paste the passage, it pastes fine, but existing 4/4 music beginning at m. 625 is shifted over by 2 quarters. This problem occurs whether or not I am in INSERT mode and whether or not I have placed a “strange red line” at the beginning of the music at 625. I don’t know how to avoid this. Conceptually, the task I am doing should be very simple: Copy and paste a subsection of the music to another place in the music. please help. Thanks!
This is probably happening because (a) you have an odd number of 2/4 bars in the section you’re copying and (b) Dorico’s unit of measurement is the beat, not the bar. So the number of beats you’re copying doesn’t line up with the number of beats in the target measure.
Working with something similar, I’m able to get it to work with Insert mode on and no insert mode stop line. I do wind up with a bunch of extra (empty) measures, but they’re easy to delete.
But even if you wind up with your music shifted by 2 beats, you can select the extra half note rest, invoke the Bars popover with Shift+B, type -2q and hit Enter – that will delete the extra 2 beats and shift the following music back to the left.
You’re right about (a). Thank you for the “Shift+B, -2q , Enter” suggestion. It worked like a charm, but I think it shouldn’t be necessary. The side-effects from some of Dorico’s copy paste behaviors make me nervous.
Well, if you’re pasting (for example) 18 beats into an area that has 20 beats (5 4/4 bars), then there are two extra beats of rest there that need to go somewhere.
It’s true that this may not be immediately obvious, and that it can be confusing to see your music shifted like that, but as long as your operation doesn’t overwrite any music, everything you entered will still be there, and it’s just a question of shifting things back.
Thanks. I get the logic about pasting 18 beats into an area that has 20. I guess what I would really like to do is insert the 18 beats between two measures – pry open a bar line and insert the 18 beats into a new as of yet undefined space. As long as I am pasting a non-fractional number of measures into that space, I would expect the measures on either side of the inserted music to be unchanged (including their bar lines and everything else). Is there a way to do that?
Yes, that’s what insert mode is for. Basically, you just copy the things you want to copy, select the position before which you want to insert those things, and paste. Here I’m pasting the bars with Gs in between the bars with Cs and Ds.
