But it is simple.
Select the barline at the end of the 7/8 bar and enter a shift-m 7/8. Select the start barline and enter your shift-m 5/8. You will end up with your new 5/8 bar and a ‘runt’ bar of rests, which can be removed with shift-b -1. Job done.
It is worth experimenting with a string of simple notes and changing time signatures with, and without, ‘insert mode’. The general rule being “anything downstream that you want preserve, protect it with a time signature”
This doesn’t work for me. All it does is insert a rest and shift all the notes (across all parts).
I don’t end up with a “runt bar of rests” I end up with a truncated bar that doesn’t match the time signature, which is pure evil IMHO. I would easily overlook the missing beats. I find this all very confusing. Notice I ended up with two things called measure 1. What ???
I think I did that by entering notes before I entered a time signature. Ignoring the first 4 beats, everything was set to 9/8. I then changed measure 2 to 5/8. That indeed created two bars labeled 5/8, but measure 3 is lacking an eighth rest. Surely measures should be padded with rests as necessary rather than leaving illegal measures, no?
It seems peculiar (illogical) for that function to be part of the barline tool, as it has absolutely nothing to do with barlines. That command can be used anywhere, not just at barlines. But it does have the undesirable result of adding truncated/illegal measures at the end of the shifting process that are very easy to overlook.
Shift-B is the Bars and Barlines popover. This absolutely does have something to do with Bars.
I thought that was what you wanted: to add time anywhere.
It’s the bars popover since that’s the one that deals with time and number of bars.
Perhaps I’ve never been stung by this before because I mostly use it when editing chant and thus I’m in open meter. In that context, adding a quarter here or there (or taking one away) is a godsend.
Would you agree that if the user has entered a meter, all the measures appearing after that meter mark (until the next one) should be COMPLETE measures, correct with that time signature?
You asked for the situation where your 7/8 bar had two rests at the end and you wanted to convert it to into a 5/8 bar! Here your 9/8 bar has correctly split into a 5/8 bar and a runt 4/8.
What are you trying to achieve here?
There is no possible consistent behaviour that makes sense in all cases. If Dorico automatically inserted rests, people would complain that they hadn’t asked for rests. If Dorico shifted all the music, people would complain that they hadn’t asked for their music to shift.
The behaviour is absolutely consistent. One just needs to learn how it works.
Dorico only automatically rebars as far as the next explicit time signature. If you turn on Insert mode before adding a time signature, it will pad the final bar before the next explicit time signature so that it’s the full length, adding rests as necessary. If you don’t turn on Insert mode you can still pad the short bar manually using Shift-B whatever Enter.
No it isn’t. it is two 5/8 bars, the second of which is illegal.
No, the OP question appeared to be about changing meter to lengthen or shorten bars… but I think we are both right.
Dorico does not consider it illegal - though perhaps eccentric.
Again… What precisely are you trying to achieve?
There are times that, after mostly completing a composition or arrangement, I might like to add a beat or two here and there, or maybe take away a beat. I agree it is possible, but when the result is illegally formed measures, well that’s something I don’t think any Dorico user should accept. That’s the main reason I switched to Dorico – because no matter what I enter, Dorico puts it into completely correct, and stylistically optimal notation. If I can’t count on measures having the right number of beats, that is just crazy, IMHO. I might was well be on Finale in that case.
If you want to avoid the “illegally formed measure” - just turn on the insert mode! Try it.
That’s good to know. Thanks.
However, until now, I never knew that Dorico would even allow incorrectly formed measures. I will never be able to look at Dorico the same way, because in the back of my mind will be this little speck of panic that I am putting out music that is going to make me look bad.
If Dorico is going to allow illegal measures, at minimum, there really should be a visual cue that calls that to the user’s attention. SmartScore, for example, backlights any illegally-formed measures in yellow, so the user can easily spot that and fit it immediately.
I know that and indeed is what I normally finish up doing (once I remember) but the numerous comments on this issue suggest that it’s not the easiest Dorico feature to grasp
I stated that wrong. That particular feature (+1q) can be applied at any rhythmic position. It is only indirectly related to bar lines, and doesn’t change bar lines at all. That’s why I find it curious.
I’m in a worse situation: the main town of my area is nicknamed “la Dorica”, due to its origin from the the Dorian people. So, the algorithms, knowing I’m here, are finding any type of “dorico” irrelevant to the program.
I usually search for “dorico 3 manual”, and it works.
Paolo
