Hi everyone,
We have just discovered mid-recording session that one of our scores has a mis-labelled time signature. There are only 2 beats in a 3/4 bar, which is obviously wrong. However the MIDI exported from Dorico into Pro Tools is showing as 3/4 (bb.103). There are no signposts in Dorico showing a time signature change, so we can only assume this is some sort of bug?
Just flagging for the development team. Happy to send across the score to an email address for further investigation if required!
EDIT: For reference we are running 3.5.10.1045
Thanks. Wes.
This can typically happen if 103 was previously in 2/4, and later changed to 3/4 (and deleted) with INSERT mode being off …
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I’m not sure what exactly caused this problem, but to my mind only having 2 beats in a 3/4 bar should never be possible, in any scenario?
EDIT: Pick up bars, of course!
You can fix this by clicking in the bar and typing shift-B for the bars popover; then type +1q, to add a quarter-note duration to this bar.
Except for a pick-up bar, of course.
Thanks also for the workaround Stephen. Whilst I appreciate the response and ‘fix’ to this issue, surely a signpost of some description should be displayed showing that something in the bar has been changed from the default?
The only reason I can think of 2 beats allowable in a 3/4 bar would be, as mentioned above, a pick up bar…
Your regular proof-reading process would normally have picked up a 3/4 time signature following an existing 3/4 time signature anyway, right? It’s not like there’s no reason for that bar to have two beats: you’ve inserted a 3/4 time signature after two beats of a bar. But that is an irregular bar, of course, and I have occasionally thought that we should have an option to display some kind of warning above a barline if it appears that the number of beats in the bar differs from the prevailing time signature (and it’s not a pick-up bar, of course).
Hi Daniel - many thanks for the response. I should revise my original post that this indeed does not seem to be a ‘bug’, but more an ‘irregular choice’…!
Yes, I agree that the proof-reading would normally have picked this up. This track in particular has a changing time signature at least every 2 bars throughout, so this irregular bar must’ve just slipped through the net on this occasion. You are correct of course that the 3/4 time signature in bar 104 was there for a reason, and this particular flow was created via copy/pasting segments from another flow, which may be where the irregular bar was introduced by accident somehow.
I really like your idea of a ‘warning’ shown above a bar-line for ‘irregular’ bars - if only to be a flag as part of the final score checking process.
Thanks a lot. Wes.
