I just learned about the locking feature with which you (supposedly) can tell Dorico not to change anything beyond a selected bar line. I assumed this was to make sure any time signature changes didn’t affect the entire rest of the piece. But it’s not working for me. What am I doing wrong? I’ve tried all the different insert modes.
The stop line applies only to the notes and other entries, not the meters.
What you need is the 4th insert mode scope, “Global adjustment of current bar”.
Thanks - yeah, I tried that insert option, the same thing happened. And I thought the stop line meant the notes wouldn’t change after that line, they’d be locked into their bars. What is the easiest way to change bar 65 to a 3/4 bar without moving everything after it?
The thing is, notes are never locked into their bars in Dorico. The barlines are like guidelines. Here’s one quick way:
- Turn on insert mode, 4th scope
- Select the dotted half note in the voice and press . to un-dot it
- Select the notes that got split at that beat and reconnect them with T
That’s it! The current bar shortens to 3/4, and the following bar comes one quarter earlier, with the prevailing meter restored.
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Thanks for your help. I’m afraid I’m still not understanding fundamentally how Dorico handles meters. Here’s another example – I want to change mm. 71-78 to 4/4 before I enter in new music. How do I change the time signature only for these measures, without affecting anything that’s already entered after? (After m. 80 the piece continues for dozens of bars, with a lot of meter changes – this is an inserted section.)
-Andrew
My process is, that I first insert a time signature in the first bar that I DONT want to change.
Say the piece is already 4/4 with 32 bars, and I want bars 8-16 to be 6/8. I first put a seemingly redundant 4/4 in bar 17. Then I put a 6/8 in bar 8 and all is good. Insert mode is mostly important when the number of beats per bar changes, so I’d turn it on just before placing the 6/8, and then turn it off again. That help?
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Yes! Thank you. So reiterate the time signature of the existing bar and Dorico won’t change it when you change the ones before. Now I can continue composing this piece!
I suggest you do some experimentation.
Dorico will calculate the amount of musical time up to the next time signature, and divide it up into bars according to the length of your new time signature. This may result in an incomplete bar. eg If your original space was 7 bars of 3/4 (21 beats) and you changed it to 4/4, you would end up with 5 bars of 4/4 and an additional pickup bar with 1 beat.
However, if you engage Insert Mode, then when you change the time signature Dorico will insert extra musical time to ensure all bars are complete (so in the above example you would have 6 complete bars (24 beats instead of 21).
Finally, it is important to understand that any manually placed barline behaves just like a time signature (eg a double barline or a start repeat)!
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