Polymeter and system breaks

Dorico
1

I have a section that uses polymeters that repeat the following structure:

Staff 1: (global): 9/8
Staff 2: (local): 11/8 11/8 7/4

The barlines are coincident every four bars.

My problem is that in Engrave mode for both the Full Score or individual players, System breaks that I try to line up on the four 9/8 bar boundaries sometimes get turned into intra-bar system breaks.

Given that I’m lining up on coincident bar lines, I find this surprising.

Am I doing something wrong wrt music notation conventions?

Or is this a limitation that is unique to Dorico?

2

The only reason I can think of that a system break would not go right where you put it is this setting in Preferences > Note Input and Editing > Breaks:
Snap system and frame breaks to barlines when creating
This is on by default; feel free to turn it off. I imagine it may behave strangely with polymeter.

And whether you change this setting or not, we can move existing breaks in the same way as notes and other items: select and Alt-arrow left or right moves things according to the grid setting. You can also select a break and Alt-click to copy it elsewhere. When copying to a barline, click at the first beat of the bar, to ensure it doesn’t go earlier.

Does this address the issue?

1 Like
3

Thanks. Your workaround solved my problem!

And yes, I had the “Snap System and frame breaks to barlines when creating” enabled when I did the original work.

I just nuked them and recreated with the setting disabled and it worked fine when I reintroduced the system breaks.