Good morning, and Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans.
Quick question: is there an easy way to have multiple time signatures at the same time, i.e., 4/4 for some instruments and 12/8 for all others? (Example: John Williams’ Superman March, bars 35 ff - see violas and celli which are in 4/4, everyone else stays in 12/8).
I am trying to figure out whether this was a recent feature introduced in one of the latest updates, but maybe I am mistaken. I haven’t closely followed all the wonderful updates and upgrades.
In Dorico this is done with hidden tuplets and a pickup-bar trick with a staff-specific meter. In brief:
Write 12/8 for everyone
Select the first bar in a staff to be 4/4, Shift-M, type 4/4,6 and Alt-Enter
(shows 4/4, but with a first bar length = 12/8, puts that on just one staff)
In the next bar in the same staff, add 12/8, also Alt-Enter, and hide it in Properties
(the barlines should match up again)
Copy these two staff-specific meters to any other 4/4 staves (select them and Alt-click)
Write 2:3 tuplets in those staves and hide the tuplets
For polymeter this simple, you might consider just writing duplets, letting them be hidden after a bar’s worth, and not bothering with the meter display tricks. It’s not hard for players to understand.
For the record: genuine poly metric music is also possible; you press ALTenter when assigning each stave its independent time signature. Just beware that this can cause other issues (such as barline alignment).