Hi, I was typing notes in a project and noticed that the slur doesn’t work as a Tie. Then I found the tie option and deleted slurs and create ties. Just fine until then, suddenly a bar didn’t let me to insert notes to complete the 4/4 beats per measure and get stucked in a 3 and a half beats per measure (Just that bar). Please Help ! Here is a screenshot of the bar.
Try deleting the barline immediately before the irregular 3-and-a-half-beat bar, and see if that takes care of it. If not, please attach the project here (zip it up first) and we’ll take a look to figure out what’s going wrong.
Still won’t let me change a doted quarter note for a half note. The measure number is 15. Thank you Daniel for the response.
Just Friends Transcription.dorico.zip (206 KB)
I’m not quite sure what you did, but perhaps you had been inputting barlines manually? You generally don’t need to do that in metered music like this. I’ve fixed up your file and it should be OK from now on, I hope.
Just Friends Transcription 2.dorico.zip (204 KB)
Yes I have been imputting barlines manually, I didn’t find out another way to do it or how to input a custom number of bars.
Thank U Daniel I can continue my work now and I would like to know how to do it properly.
Have a good day.
Just add more bars using Shift+B and type e.g. +24 to add more bars, or you can add them from the Bars panel on the right-hand side in Write mode.
I experienced something similar yesterday. I had started from the Piano template. After I finished entering the piece, I went back and manually added a few new bars somewhere in the middle. I changed an existing bar with music in it from 7/8 to 4/4, and I was left with only 3 and a half beats. Scratching my head, I tried changing it to 5/4, 7/4, but it was coming up short in each case. In the end, I had to delete the existing original 7/8 bar and redo it.
I guess the barline immediately following the end of the 7/8 bar that you changed to 4/4 must have had a special barline of its own.
It would be super-helpful if Dorico actually showed you what was actually going on in this situation so you can come up with a proper plan to fix things. The idea is that it will show you a signpost (like it does for e.g. system/frame breaks) at these barlines to let you know that they represent an irregular bar, or a hidden time signature. We’ll try and get this in to either the first update or the one immediately following it.
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I have a similar issue… a client file, xml exported from Finale, the client left a rest out of a bar. Dorico shows a 4/4 time sig with 3.5 beats. When I try to fix, it moves the rest of the file over. In Finale, “retranscribe” fixes it… how do you fix this in Dorico?
If you insert an eighth rest and then everything after is on the wrong beat, see if you can delete the barline that’s coming half a beat early, and whether that fixes it.
There are several ways to go about this, and I don’t want to give too much confusing advice at once.
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I’d be happy to see any and all possible solutions!
These aren’t manual barlines, AFAICT - the definitions came in with the XML.
I see the little popover that says 4/4,3.5 - when I change that, it moves everything over. When I add a time signature to the next bar, making any changes to that bar with the bad beat content definition spills over and moves everything again.
What are some of the other possibilities for a fix ?
In Finale, every beat is automatically accounted for. It seems like the sum of the entries is the ruler in Dorico…?
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Many kinds of mistakes can happen when interpreting XML, including wrong-length bars.
Next thing to try: Put a temporary 4/4 meter on the correct beat after the wrong bar, as a stopper. Then turn on insert mode, double-click the “4/4,3.5” (which I’m guessing is what Dorico calls a “signpost”) and make it just 4/4. This adjusts the length of the current bar. Once you’ve got the barlines in the right places, you can safely delete any redundant meters.
BTW, “4/4,3.5” means start 4/4 meter with a pickup bar of 3½ beats. Remember to turn off insert mode as soon as you’re done with it, so other stuff doesn’t get displaced.
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One can also add “beats” to an incomplete measure with SHIFT + B followed by the number and denomination of the counts to be added.
1q = 1 quarter note
1e = 1 eighth note
1x = 1 sixteenth note
1y = 1 thirty-second note (IIRC)
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The Shift B shorcut opens a little popover, where, when I enter “1e,” it creates a 1/8 bar after the one missing an eighth… it doesn’t add a missing beat to that bar. I must be missing something…
And, when I tried “locking” the following bar into 4/4, I got the same result of stuff all getting knocked an eighth to the right for the rest of the piece.
I gave up on it… fixed the Finale file and re-exported. I’d hoped to find a way to fix it in Dorico, anticipating this won’t be the last time I see this (we get a lot of files coming in from all kindsa folks here)…
Was insert mode on or off?
It was on… it happened again, but this time I also tried Mark Johnson’s method … In Insert mode, I moved the cursor to the last entry in the bar, a dotted q - then used your add bar shortcut to add an eighth note, and the same thing happened, it tacked on an eighth note bar after the bad one… but then, doing Mark’s thing of editing the sig in the Popover fixed it. It also divided the entry (which was a dotted q), so I had to fix the duration and get rid of the extra rest, then it was solved. This is very helpful… it gives an insight into the guts of Dorico rhythm editing behavior…
Meanwhile, I also found that Mark’s method of adding time sigs to both bars (bad and following good) then editing the popover in Insert mode was the most direct method, didn’t create an extra bar that needed to be fixed in another step, and didn’t divide the entry. OK! Very good. I get it now…
I finally noticed that questionable bars have a nice warning flag over them… that’s superior behavior to Finale, as is the whole rhythm/note entry process with the grid.
Derek, I’m curious where you found that series of shortcuts for the beats? Or a comprehensive description of the Bar/Beat tool…?
Yes, those signposts are actually hidden meter changes. (There are signposts of many different colors to show where all kinds of hidden items are. The signposts themselves can be displayed or hidden.)
In this case, the meter signposts probably indicate what Dorico calls an “explicit barline” – which can come anywhere, not necessarily where the next barline should come. Try deleting a barline with a signpost and you’ll see the previous meter continues.
See under “Beats”:
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There’s a fairly comprehensive list of entries you can use in each of the popovers here.
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