I have a passage of music by Manuel de Falla where the time signature is defined as 6/8 = 3/4. How should I handle this. Some bars are clearly 3/4 with three quater notes in the bar whereas other bars are clearly 6/8 with 6 eight notes in the bar. Importing an MXL file resulted in a poor result where the program tried unsuccessfully to squeeze three quater notes into a 6/8 bar due to the fact that the import choose to define everything as 6/8!!
You can handle the differences in note grouping (and beaming) either by adding hidden 3/4 and 6/8 time sugnatures where you need them, or forcing durations and manual beaming.
To speed things up you can copy/paste and repitch (using Lock duration) - the forced duration/beaming will be copied too.
How did it fail to “squeeze” 3 quarter-notes into a bar of 6/8, given that it’s exactly the right size for the bar?
At worst, I would expect it to display the middle quarter as two tied eighths.
Those bars are 3/4. You could put a hidden 3/4 at bar 9.
Also the original is notated generally like this…
To get the ties, you’ll have to force duration:
- Set the rhythmic grid to semiquavers.
- Select the 3 trill notes.
*Hit 5 o shift-alt-right arrow
For the following 6/8 bar, I would just use manual beaming (rather than change time signature)
You could use a hidden 3/4 time sig for the bars that need it. Otherwise you’ll have to use Force Duration and manual beaming.
What generated the MXL file? If it’s from a scanner, it might not be correct to start with.
Thanks - that helped a lot. Is there a key stroke for beaming so I don’t have to go via Edit/Notation/Beaming?
Yes it was scanned and converted to an XML file in SmartScore. From there I have found that going via Finale, creating an MXL file reduces a lot of errors.
