yes! Did you do something different from what I did?
I tried several things. What worked was to add a bar at 120, put a 1/8 meter, deleted all the little useless bars, deleted the barline at 120, and input the 4/4|1/8 meter, and this time it worked (probably because the number of beats was there).
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I’m trying to figure out why the method I was using didn’t work anymore here, but worked previously. I thought it was a software glitch.
Thinking about it, I probably should have added an 8th note at the end of 119 (Shift-B, 1e) and then the meter… Way faster and easier.
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So you actually have to manually add extra note values before using insert mode to change the meter? I’m not sure I understand why Dorico would need us to do that.
The problem here is the 4/4 in the next bar. It kinda locks Dorico. Had it not been there, Dorico would have rebarred everything from there (in 4/4|1/8) until the end. That added 4/4 is like an override, if I understand correctly.
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Ok. I knew about the “locking” you can do with meter changes. But up until this point, I hadn’t realized that you couldn’t just add (or subtract?) beats in a meter you wanted to change using insert mode. You actually have to have the surplus beats available in other future bars. I don’t really understand the logic behind this, but maybe someone at Dorico can explain it to us someday.
You can, thanks to the “Global adjustment of current bar” Insert Mode:
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I think the limitation in your case is trying to create an aggregate time signature.
Dorico is quite happy to create a simple 9/8 bar with Insert mode on, which you can then alter to 4/4+1/8.
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@Janus is right. This aggregate time signature is what makes this whole thing unpredictable. I suppose it should not be working like that, insert mode should be able to cope with such meter. But it’s a rather rare situation, so I would not make a fuss about it. I like the way @charles_piano dealt with that situation (for the record, the first thing I tried was to use insert mode in global submode, and change the meter, but it did not work. I’m relieved to see that it should have.)
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Whoa! Can you walk me through a bit more of what you did here? Thanks for creating this amazing video!
I always thought (again, maybe just my limited assumption?) that “insert mode” was literally designed to “insert” beats into a bar in which those beats didn’t previously exist. I think the consensus here is that, while yes that’s true, there is some glitch in Dorico that prevents me from using insert mode consistently with an aggregate time signature?
I wonder in Dorico’s official documentation, does it say that, to use aggregate time signatures, you should first enter a non-aggregate version, then change it?
I’d say he simply turned on insert mode (I) but making sure it’s the global mode, the one that adds time to all instruments and all voices. Then he lengthened the last chord in 119 by one eighth note, which just covered the number of beats you would need, then insert mode was no longer useful so he turned it down, rewrote the meter as 4/4|1/8, done.
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Sorry, I didn’t give any details, here they are:
I activate Insert mode, right-click the Insert Mode icon and click the 4th sub-mode (“Global adjustment of current bar”):
Note that my grid duration is set to 8th:
I select the last note of the bar and press Shift+Alt+Right arrow, to increase its duration by an 8th:
I see that a 9/8 bar has been created, but is hidden (not sure why, maybe because the previous TS was hidden)
I double click the signpost and enter the TS that you want, which indeed contains 9 8th, but in a different display. I type 4/4|1/8
I switch off Insert Mode, select the last note, and press Shift+Alt+Left arrow to shorten it by an 8th. An 8th rest replaces automatically the removed part of the note at the end of the bar.
A quick test on a blank project shows that the time signature normally appears:
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“Global” Mode (the one with the globe icon) wouldn’t add extra time into the bar, AFAIK. That’s why I selected “Global adjustment of current bar” (the one with the multibar rest icon)
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Ok, that’s excellent. I need to go back to the manual and read that thing again 
Thanks for correcting me 
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