Strange rest grouping in 15/8

I’m encountering what I think is a bug which I can’t seem to get rid of using any notation rules. I know I can use force duration to fix it, but was hoping for a more automatic fix. Any ideas?
Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 1.54.31 am.png

What is the “bug”? How are you trying to group/subdivide your 15 eighths?

It’s 3+3+3+3+3.

You can reproduce this if you input 8th-notes to a 15/8 bar one at a time.

You get the same bug (plus a different variation on the same theme) if you input 8th-notes to a 21/8 bar.

Dear sidebyside,
Have you tried that same bar with the meter entered as [3+3 +3 +3 +3]/8? It should help Dorico group those eighths accordingly to your needs.

Yep tried that, but it didn’t work I’m afraid.

Then you’ll have to use force duration and probably input some explicit rests to get the result you need…

What does the OP wish to see (aside from better handling of rests)?

I don’t know about the OP, but if the meter is entered as [3+3+3+3+3]/8, then I most certainly wold expect to see rests in multiples of dotted quarter. And I would think this should be the default behavior if meter is entered as 15/8.

Like cparmerlee said, I would expect either of the following:
expected behaviour.png
Speaking of expected behaviour, when I have a note that entirely fills a bar of 15/8, even with “Notate as a single note” selected if a note fills an entire bar of irregular meter [and yes I know there is no such note for 15/8], I would expect something like option 2 or option 3 below. I’ve also added in suggested popover entries that could facilitate larger groupings like this.
expected behaviour_2.png

sidebyside…,

Did you already try inserting timesignature with: [6+6+3]/8 0r [6+3+6]/8.
With these timesignatures I get the results you expected.

Jan

Hi Jan, yes I did try those, and they fix the rest issue, but I would prefer to keep my eighths beamed in groups of 3.

I guess the problem is that the code in Dorico that works out how to notate the rest doesn’t consider the option of “two dotted rests with different durations” (e.g. a dotted half plus a dotted quarter) or similar possibilities, so the “simplest” option it can think of for " nine 8th-rests" is “a whole rest plus an 8th”.

I have always been a little uncertain of the proper conventions here. As I see it, when the entire measure is a single note, the best way to indicate that (for anything with 4 or more beats) may be simply a whole note. I have seen that a lot, but not universally. It is common enough that I think every musician would understand it.

I think there could be a good debate about 5/4, as a whole note could cause people to mis-count that as 4 beats. And certainly in 12/8, a dotted whole note is the way to go. And if the composer needs to indicate the beats in 11/8 as 3+2+3+3, then rests of dotted quarter, quarter, dotted quarter, dotted quarter make sense. But if it isn’t important to show the beats, I’d rather see simply a whole rest for that 11/8 bar.

This is interesting. I know it’s true for rests, but I’m not aware of ever having seen it for notes. I suppose you’re right, though – I would know what it meant if I saw it, though more through deduction than familiarity.

I’ve never seen it for notes either.

Actually I don’t think I would “know what it meant if I saw it”. I’ve played plenty of music with no time signatures, and every bar of a different length (written both recently, and in the 16th century when that was the standard way to write almost anything!). In that situation, a whole note can only mean 4 beats, and if the music on different staves doesn’t “add up” rhythmically, then somebody made a typo!

I defer to your broader experience, but I’ve never seen this, and personally I would find such notation mind-numbingly confusing. A whole rest is just fine, but a whole note? Even after repeated readings, I think I would still be convinced there were a hidden meter change somewhere that I had missed.

Just to be pedantic, a “whole rest” and a “bar rest” are two different things - they use the same symbol, but the horizontal position in the bar is different. You only find genuine “whole rests” in bars which are longer than four quarter-notes, of course.

I think you are right. Whole rests are a lot more common than whole notes in these situations. I think that is because if a person is playing (rather than resting), there will usually be some grouping to the beats that the player needs to track, even if the notes are are tied.

How so?