Hi there!
I would like to write two different time signatures at the same time. Something like the Tannhäuser Overture, where the violins are in 9/8 and the rest of the orchestra is in 3/4.
I hope someone can help me.
Thanks a lot!
You would fake it by still having tuplets there but hiding the tuplet brackets and numerals, and hiding the time signature. There’s a little bit more involved because you still have to get the desired time signature to appear at first, but that’s most of it.
See this article for details and complete steps: Masking meters and creating polymeters with metric modulations in Dorico - Scoring Notes
4 Likes
The solution is closing with Alt+Enter after you entered the Time Signature with Shift+M in the staff you want a different one:
1 Like
In the specific case of 3/4 and 6/8 simultaneously it is that simple because it is the same quantity of eighth notes in every bar. However, in other situations like in the original post you have to fake it with hidden tuplets and hidden time signatures and custom pickup bars to avoid getting non-coinciding bar lines.
3 Likes
Yes Michael, you are perfectly right…
I stupidly hoped in an automatic alignment…
In Dorico, and eighth is an eight is and eight is an eighth…. It’s what makes the spacing so robust, though.
3 Likes
The case of a non-power-of-2 for the bottom number is different. Notice that 9/12 meter in Dorico is actually 9/8. See my explanation here for details.
2 Likes
Yes Sasha, but in my deep ignorance I taught that 3/4=6/8=9/12=… and because the first two work… But thanks a lot to you Mark and your interesting explanation about denominators and power of two!
Anyway what do you think about an option to align? Fakes are smart, but a little time consuming aren’t they? It would be interesting even aligning Cutc with 13/24…! (perhaps a bit too much… 
)
There definitely was discussion early in development about enabling Dorico to display proportional timelines without hidden tuplets. I don’t know whether they are still considering this, but if so I would guess that it is a low priority, since the current method is effective.
The issue as I see it is: We have to weigh the inconvenience of this method with the potential confusion that would come with setting proportions. How do you present the mechanism for setting one? And how do you display them once set? Should there be limits to the allowed ratio? Once you start trying to design such a thing, the workaround doesn’t seem so bad!
2 Likes
I wonder if an easy solution on the development end of things would be to be able to specify which type of note gets the “main beat” when creating a custom time signatures (or even a toggle option in more common signatures)? Maybe this would be the easiest way to get barlines to line up? Or specifying/forcing whether something should be interpreted as duple or triple meter.
This ends up boiling down to support for polytempi (having a different tempo in some parts than others). My suspicion is, if/when they eventually come up with a solution for this, it will hopefully be a more powerful one that could also accommodate for aleatoric styles like the Polish indeterminacy of Lutoslawski, which often uses different performers playing fully written out lines, with each at a tempo independent from that of the other players.
OT: Is that some sort of border dispute, @mducharme? 
2 Likes
OK! Thank you all! Learned!
(But an option would be faster…! [And I didn’t experiment with tuplets of tuplets and complex rhythms…]
)
Lutosławski is a very hard case – he himself deploys multiple different styles, depending on the composition (I wrote about it in this thread):
And I think each of them might need a different approach… but I am not sure.
1 Like