Insert bar before change of time signature

Dorico
1

I frequently find myself wanting to insert an additional bar or bars just before a change in time signature - but these inserted bars always have the new time signature, whereas I want the “before” time signature.

Yes, yes. There are various ways of doing this - but they all involve multiple steps. E.g.,

  1. Insert new bar - this bar is empty and it has the new time signature
  2. Copy the new time signature into the bar where you really want the new time signature to start
  3. Next if “before” time signature has fewer beats, then turn insert mode on
  4. Delete the time signature in the empty bar
  5. If your previous time signature had fewer beats than the new, you will now have an additional bar with the remaining beats. Delete that bar
  6. If you want multiple additional bars at the previous time signature, insert those as well just before the empty bar

And yes, you can also insert your new bar(s) just before the last bar in your “before” time signature, but this has it’s own particular set of problems.

Is there any simple way to insert additional bars that have the “before” time signature? E.g., Alt-Shift-B?

2

Use the system track?

3

The system track also inserts after a time signature change currently. As it happens, we have been talking internally about this exact issue just recently…

4

Stefan is being very coy, which I appreciate, but I will be a bit less coy: there is no way to do this in one step at the moment, but Stefan has recently been working on some changes that would allow you to create a bar before a time signature if you select the barline to the left of the time signature or the time signature itself. And we have also changed the system track such that when you click the + button to insert a bar, the bar is inserted before the time signature rather than after, and this feels much more natural. Barring any major problems discovered in our internal testing, you can expect these changes in the next update.

5

Great news!
For the time being, my workflow would be :
1 create the new bar one bar earlier.
2 use system track to select the bar after the new empty one
3 use alt-left arrow to move all the music of this bar to the new bar
That’s it. The empty bar is there, right before the time signature change, and no messing around with insert mode or meter changes :wink:

6

Daniel - This is good to hear. Thanks you!
Marc - I’ve done this technique also. The problem with this method is that (among other things) you lose ties and slurs