Multi-bar rests sometimes fail to consolidate

Dorico
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1

Dorico is great! I switched from Finale after 15+ years and haven’t looked back.

I have a large symphonic score where I noticed sometimes multi-measure rests are failing to consolidate in specific cases. There is no obvious reason, and I can tell it is a bug (rather than some hidden element in the score) because adding and removing system breaks will temporarily fix it.

I deleted most of the content of my project but confirmed that the problem still exists in this smaller example project. Rather inconveniently, the forum will not allow me to upload a file nor post a link because I am a new user (don’t you want examples with your bug reports?!), but you can download this example project here if you follow my instructions to circumvent the forum rules:

  1. Observe that there is a mix of multi-bar rests and whole rests. For example, m. 53 has 3 whole rests in a row.
  2. Click m. 53 and type shift-S to add system break. Then ctrl-Z to undo. The multi-bar rest is correctly consolidated!
  3. Choose Layout Options > Players > Bar rests and Multi-bar rests > Consolidate > None, Apply. All the rests are split.
  4. Choose Consolidate > Multi-bar Rests. The rests are consolidated, but some are not, e.g. mm. 53, 58, 75, 82.

Speculation: as I said, this is an excerpt from a large project, so I suppose there might be some hidden material that shouldn’t prevent rest consolidation, but sometimes does?

2

Note that (2) is not a good workaround: I found that after doing some other activity and coming back to the part, the affected multi-bar rests would be split again! So it’s a fairly serious issue, as it prevents me from finishing the parts with multi-bar rests.

3

Welcome to the forum, Jonathan.
I don’t have any useful input, except to confirm that something very weird is going on. It seems that pretty much whatever I try, saving and then reloading the project causes the rests to split again.

Hopefully somebody from the development team will be able to take a closer look at the project soonish.

P.S. The restrictions on uploading files are specific to new users on this forum - it’s an anti-spam measure.

4

I too am having this issue with music that was entered manually! I’m hand entering a bunch of handwritten sheet music from a well known arranger in the Bay Area (RIP) so I can send readable PDFs to players and for some reason in the trumpet part the multi-rests fail to consolidate!?Begin the Beguine.dorico (1.2 MB)

5

You have hidden time signatures (or perhaps non-standard barlines, or possibly you initially entered a double-barline then replaced it with a “normal” barline - this isn’t the same thing as a default barline), plus a System Break at bar 18, as evidenced by the signposts that appear if I go View > Signposts and toggle them back on.

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I suggest carrying out the following steps in the score, as that way it’ll be easy to see if you’ve deleted any actual barlines:

  1. Click the red time signature signpost.
  2. Switch off its Hide Time Signature property.
  3. Try selecting and deleting the barline immediately before the time signature.

If that doesn’t work or it leaves you with a double-length bar, Undo, then

3a. Try selecting and deleting the time signature itself (not the signpost).

Then for bar 18 if you want that on the same system as bars 5-17 you’ll need to select and delete the System Break signpost.

2 Likes
6

Thank you so much! I think I was just so mired in the weeds I didn’t even think about the signposts.

1 Like
7

Just following up on this. Has the dev team had a chance to look at my example file?

8

Sorry, no, not yet. I have this thread bookmarked (with a bunch of others) and will try to return to it soon.

9

I’m not able to publish my orchestra piece until solving this, but I played around with it some more. It seems to be related to the “condensing” feature. If I disable condensing in Layout Options, then the rests are consolidated correctly.

10

I discovered that this bug was fixed in Dorico 3.5.12. Probably this is a duplicate of this thread: Consolidate multi-bar rests not working with condensing - #7 by dspreadbury

I didn’t find the other thread before because I didn’t realize it was a bug in the “condensing” feature.

Side note: I had been checking for updates using Help > Check for Updates, but in Dorico 3.5 that option links to the wrong page: it sends you to Dorico 3 Updates and Downloads | Steinberg which is the 3.1.x update page. So when I downloaded that file and ran it, it didn’t update my 3.5 install, and I assumed there weren’t any updates. So it would be good to fix that link.

11

Yes, sorry about the fact that the Check for Updates link goes to the wrong page. We can’t fix that without making it go to the wrong place for Dorico 3 users!

12

Hi People,
Is perhaps the MultiBar rest bug back? I just downloaded latest Dorico 4, and I have a part with many, many rests, and they will not condense. I did the appropriate things about multi-bar rests. Anyone else experiencing this?
Thanks,
J

13

Do you have any signposts visible?

14

I figured it out! It was because I had vocals, and the last word before the break carried over a few notes and had a line attached. The 28 following rests thought the line continued. I got rid of the word and it worked. Took me a couple hours to figure this one out, but I wonder if others had problems because of this? Very good to know!

15

Yes, the lyric line thing was discussed earlier this year (and other times that I am not finding just now).

16

Actually, it turns out, even a word on a quarter note, if it is just before a bunch of rests, does the same thing. That is hard to fool. At least that would be easy to replicate for any bug fixers out there. I will try the dummy note thing to see if I can do this without some Engrave, move the word around trick.