In this piece in 2/4 time, four measures have signposts, all saying “2/4 (q, 1+1)”. All bars have the correct notes for the time sig. Bars 25, 26 and 38 all play okay. Playing bar 32 has a curious pause after the last note. Answers to other posts in this forum say just delete the signpost: okay, but where did they come from? What do the signpost contents mean? Bar 32 presents a more serious issue: how do I get rid of the pause?
Lisboa Antiga.dorico.zip (1.3 MB)
Hi @jrethorst,
there is some mess going on with your time signatures and removed rests:
- you have several pick-up bars (the signposts, that show hidden TS of bars that contain different number of beats than the 2/4: 2 of them have 4 beats, one of them 2,5 beats !),
- you have some inserted bar-lines that create some other time signatures, and
- you have hidden rests (this creates some problems, in particular in bar 32).
I made a short video to show how to handle this globally (you may want to remove some rests again, but now with clean Time Signatures and bar lengths. Oh: and don’t forget to deactivate Insert mode after you deleted the two eight bar rests!! 
):
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A signpost represents something which is in the score but not currently visible. These particular signposts indicate a hidden 2/4 time signature. If you select one of them and open the lower Properties panel, you’ll see that the “Hide time signature” is ticked; if you untick it, the time sig will appear. You can generally delete either the signpost or the time sig.
I was going to write more about the last 2, which are trickier, but I see that @Christian_R has already provided a detailed explanation!
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@Christian_R, thank you for a very helpful video and explanation! I wasn’t able to understand everything (start and end voice are not explained in the manual) but the file, attached, is now much cleaner. But bar 26 still has a signpost I don’t understand. I transcribed this file from the handwritten original of the arranger, and what may appear as 2.5 beats in the bar is just rhythm characteristic of the Portuguese Fado style. When I delete the signpost, a 2/4 time signature appears in that bar, even though the stated time signature is 2/4 throughout. When I delete the time signature, the signpost reappears. My transcription of the arrangement is accurate and I’d just like to get rid of the signpost. Is there a way to do that, other than just hide it? Thank you again.
Lisboa Antiga.dorico (1.4 MB)
By the way, a question:
Signposts are indeed very useful because they indicate hidden elements in the score, hidden whether intentionally (tuplets, time signatures…) or unintentionally (C Major or A minor key signatures…)
Why, then, are faked time signatures* not properly displayed in signposts, why isn’t their irregularity properly described? That could be very useful in some cases. A fake 2/4 with one more 8th (2/4,2.5) will still be displayed 2/4 (q, 1+1) in the signpost, as a regular 2/4, instead of 2/4 (q, 1+1; e, 1) or 2/4 (e, 5) or anything that could show the hidden reality, which is the purpose of signposts!
*like pickup bars but in a more general sense: smaller or larger than the displayed time signature, anywhere in the piece.
The example below doesn’t really make sense of course, but it shows what I mean:
Here’s some info about starting/ending voices (from the Deleting Rests manual entry) in the Properties Panel, should it be helpful to you, @jrethorst.
Result
All rests in the selection are deleted. This is done by automatically activating Starts voice and Ends voice in the Notes and Rests group of the Properties panel on the notes or rests immediately to the right/left of deleted rests, so that no rests are shown in the selected regions.
Note
- You can show rests again later by selecting the notes or rests immediately to the right/left of deleted rests, then deactivating the corresponding Starts voice or Ends voice properties in the Notes and Rests group of the Properties panel.
(@Lillie_Harris, FWIW I tried search terms like “starting voices,” “ending voices,” then adding “properties” after and didn’t come up with a link. Any search advice for this topic?)
I partially agree. However, if you double click a signpost the popover reveals the pick-up details.
If you’re looking for an exact phrase, put it inside quotation marks, like “starts voice”.
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Indeed! But I was just wondering why Signposts here don’t behave like elsewhere. Maybe there is (as almost always) a logical reason, but I can’t figure it out.
I agree that it would be nice for meter signposts to show pickup details.
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Thanks, @Lillie_Harris! That did indeed take me right to the Deleting rests entry.
Still, might I suggest that a searchable entry for starting/ending voices could be a valuable addition? Seems like it might have been helpful to the OP following Christian’s response. (I hope I’m not overstepping! 
)
Aha. I searched for “start voice” and “end voice” using the quote marks. No results. Changing the phrases to “starts voice” and “ends voice” works. Thank you, @Lillie_Harris.
I still don’t understand what this particular signpost is doing. The bar is in 2/4, the 16th note ahead of the beat notwithstanding. Double-clicking the signpost puts a 2/4 sig in that bar, even though the whole piece is in 2/4. What am I missing?
This has been a long thread. Can you please restate what the particular issue is that you’re looking at now? And does it relate to the project file you posted above?
The issue does relate to the second file posted, and concerns a signpost on bar 26, whose meaning is unclear.
The signpost indicates a hidden time signature. If you open the Properties panel, you’ll see that it has “Hide time signature” ticked.
If you try to delete the signpost, nothing happens – and if you make the time sig visible and then delete it, the signpost re-appears.
But with the signpost visible, if you select the barline at the start of the bar and delete it, the signpost goes away. In Dorico, time signatures and barlines are connected in ways that are not always apparent. In this case, it looks like the barline was explicitly set to single, which creates a hidden time signature object, and you can’t delete the time signature without also deleting the explicit barline.
I selected the barline at the start of the bar and pressed Delete, expecting the barline to disappear, leaving two bars (at 2/4) worth of notes in one bar. But the barline did not disappear, it just became unselected, and the signpost did disappear. This solves the signpost but leaves me wondering what it was about the barline, which you say “was explicitly set to single”. As far as I could see, it was just like every other [single] barline in the piece. Where did the funny barline come from? I set the time signature, 2/4 throughout the piece, when I started note input and Dorico took it from there regarding barlines.
Every bar in Dorico has a default barline, which displays as a single barline**. When you change a barline to a double barline (for example), the double barline doesn’t exactly replace the default barline – it overlays it. If you then select the double barline and hit delete, the overlay is deleted, leaving the default barline behind. Then if you select the default barline and hit delete, the barline itself gets deleted. (You can try this yourself.)
You can also select a (default) barline and then explicitly set it to single (popover Shift+B, ‘single’). It looks exactly the same (except for the time sig signpost that appears), but what you’ve really got is a default barline with a single barline overlay. Just as with the double barline, you can delete the (single) overlay and leave the default (single) barline in place.
As a consequence of this, if you create a double barline somewhere (or dashed, or tick, or…) and then decide you want it to be single again, what you should do is delete the barline (that is, the overlay), leaving the default behind. If you instead explicitly change it to single, what you’re doing is changing the overlay from double to single.
**Edit: The default barline is actually whatever barline you select in Notation Options > Barlines > Default barline type
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