Formatting an unusual score

Hi Folks

I was asked to transpose a part in a piece, and then create a conductor’s score including that transposed part.

Normally, this is a very straightforward thing…

Save for this piece of music, that starts with measures of opened meters.

I have attached the measures with the open meters, and in my initial efforts, I could not resolve how to handle the whole notes in one voice living with the fermatas in other voices.

At least at my newbie level, I don’t know how to have one part have one fermata over a “whole” note, and another part have multiple fermatas in a “measure”.

I use quotations, because “whole” notes in these measures have the same placeholder function as the Dorico approach to “whole measure rests” (ie, the whole rest echoes the standard of a measure rest regardless of the measure meter.

Any thoughts on the fermata issue?

Thanks.

The “open meter” will still be underneath a meter of some duration, e.g. in your case the first “bar” = 10/4

Create hidden tuplets for the sustained “quasi whole notes” and you do not get any unwanted fermatas. (You’d likely want to have also the tacet parts have fermatas over the bar rests.)

Another option that makes writing this stuff more malleable would be to create a playing technique that looks like a fermata. It’s identical, but that way you can put in the bars only the “minimum” number of real Shift+H fermatas, and fill out the other needed ones with playing techniques.

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I am sorry I wrote below while ViliRobert was writing!

Here is a brief snap of what I am able to make it look like.

After reading his post, I will have to learn how to create hidden tuplets…

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Create a regular tuplet (4:10 in quarter notes in this case), fill it with a whole note/semibreve and hide the number (+poss. bracket) from Properties (select the tuplet number first)

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Well, heck…that worked!

How in the world did you figure that out?? :astonished:

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Clearly! Thanks for your help!

The composer wanted to strain my counting:

There are 37 sixteenth notes in this “measure”…had to use 16:37…

You mean 37:16x, right? But what about those whole notes that are in sync with the last three quarters? :person_shrugging:

Hi @ste2123190, not sure if this may help, but I was able to reproduce your desired result with open meter (and without hidden tuples). Using only hidden rests. And insert mode in global adjustment of current bar scope, when I had to delete some unwanted rests generated by the open meter.

I attach the dorico file (please ignore the first bar, that was causally entered, while the second bar corresponds to your score example, more or less).
I only had to manually adjust the last fermata in upper staff, and the last breath marks, because the last hidden rest probably doesn’t provide correct spacing):

Dorico file:
open meters fermatas with removed rests.dorico (575.6 KB)

Result:

For the measure with two whole notes, I used 16:18, and then 16:19…but:

Lining up the two whole notes eludes me yet for playback…easy enough to do 16:25 to get the first whole note, but that leaves placing a whole note in 3 quarter notes…

Easy enough to move the second whole note in engrave mode, but who knows about playback?

I will look at the second method!

A 3rd method is to use a nested tuplet on the instrument with the cadenza. (so you only have to worry about changing one instrument)