Turn multi measure rests off selectively

• Nov 15, 2012 - 22:10

I have a problem with no solution I can find in the handbook: I need to turn off "multi measure rest" in one location while preserving it for the rest of the score (see example attached for the reason; my real life example looks even worse: the first ending stretches itself over the entire line instead of just the last bar).

Any ideas about how to do it? Put some music in and make it invisible? With two parts somehow?

I don't want to turn the function off altogether: it is a pain in the neck to have to count the single bars of rest in the part one plays out of.

Attachment Size
Untitled.mscz 2.02 KB

Comments

In reply to by azumbrunn

Which measure are you setting this for? It should be the *first* measure you want to *not* be part of the multimeasure rest. In your case, the measure with the 1st ending over it. I tried it with your example and it works fine.

But also note, your score has a problem in that you have attached the 2nd ending to the same measure as the 1st ending and then dragged it to look like it is over the next measure. You have to actually attach the volta to the correct ranges of measures - see Volta in the Handbook for information on how to do this.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

This is becoming interesting. I originally set up the example (which is part of a huge score) by turning off the multi measure rest function, copy/pasting the notes and rests into the file and setting the repeat sign following 2 bars of rest (as yet 2 separate bars). Then I attached prima volta to the bar before the repeat sign and seconda volta to the bar after. Then I turned on multi measure rest. 2nda volta looked fine after that, but prima volta extended too far to the beginning.

Now I downloaded the example again and opened it and it looks as you describe it. It seems to have changed very much by uploading and downloading: 2nda volta is now attached to measure 1, prima volta to the word "violin" (!) and both spread spread all over the entire line. I corrected the example and attached both voltas properly (multi measure off), then turned multi measure back on. 2nda volta stayed unchanged, prima volta was anchored to somewhere inside the measure before the repeat sign. I saved, closed and re-opened the file: now prima volta is again attached to "violin" while 2nda is still correct - which means that I must have mis-attached it when setting up the example.

Meanwhile the suggested solution still does not work for me either in this example or in the original score. Because I am using a Mac?

I may add that I think that in a situation where a "volta" line is attached to a bar in the middle of a rest the rest should automatically be broken by Musescore, i.e. it should show an x measure rest, then the start of volta followed by a y measure rest follwed by the repeat sign. This problem wii hardly occur in scores, only in parts. One could just omit the voltas since for the part in question there is no difference. This would however change the measure numbering. It is also a pain in a rehearsal when you say "second ending" and the violist says "what second ending?" (Happens all the time with cheap publishers)

I'll try the nightly download and see how v. 2 handles this.

In reply to by azumbrunn

I suspect you aren't doing *exactly* what I am. So try this, step by step, with the file you uploaded:

1) style / edit general style
2) turn off create multi measure rests, OK
3) select 2nd ending, delete (since it's attached incorrectly and you'll have to replace it anyhow)
4) right (ctrl?) click measure under 1st ending
5) measure properties
6) turn on break multi measure rest, OK
7) style / edit gheneral style
8) turn on create multi measure rests, OK

If you following these steps *exactly*, do you not find the multi measure rest does not get created, and the volta works correctly?

And yes, ideally, voltas should automatically break multimeasure rests. This has already been filed and fixed for 2.0 - see #12086: [1.1] Volta doesn't automatically break multimeasure rest; extracted parts messed up. That also explains the messed up parts.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I too have found a similar problem. So, if I understand now,
1. Turn off multimeasure rests.
2. Go to the bar you wish to not be a part of the MM rest.
3. THEN, re-engage MM rests.

This seems very unintuitive and complex. From the Name, "turn off MM rests" I deduced that you would just go to the MM rest and right click.

In reply to by xavierjazz

Well, normally you wouldn't turn MM rests on until after setting this flag, so there would be mo extra step. And if you do accidentally turn on MM rests before setting breaks, how would you select the measure where you want the break to occur? If you can think of a way of doing it without first turning off MM rests, that should work but I can't imagine how you'd manage to select the measure unkess it happened to be the first measure of the group.

Hopefully, though, with 2.0 this will all be less of an issues, as MM rests will automatically be broken in correct places.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The way I had thought it worked is that you would check on a MM rest and break and that particular set of MM rests would be undone. Make the adjustments and repeat the "set MM rests" feature and all would again be how one wanted it. I can see a problem in that logic as it would require a secondary "set MM rests" facility.

In reply to by xavierjazz

Yes, it seems a command (in right click menu, perhaps, or in the measure properties dialog when working on a multimeasure rest) to expand just that particular MM rest could be useful. And then there would need to be a corresponding command to recombine the selected measures. I think Finale does this?

It's not actually that different than turing off MM rests globally, making you chane, then turning them on again. And actually, the latter is more efficient is you have several different MM rests to break. But this will hopefully become moot with 2.0, as it will go from just being somewhat uncommon to very rare to need to insert manual breaks.

I select 16 bars, then right click, in an attempt to turn off multimeasure rests for the entire range. problem is, as soon as I right click, all the bars except for the first one un-highlight themselves. what am I missing?

In reply to by SteveBlower

No I am not missing that fact. I am well aware of it.
I turn off multimeasure rests so that I can SELECT the measures I want to tick. Then I SELECT all of those measures. Then I right click on the selection and it immediately selects only the first of those measures. What I'm trying to do is untick MM rests across multiple measures in one action, while keeping the global MM rests setting ON - so that the REST of the piece displays MM rests. That does not work, meaning if I want to leave 16 bars open for someone to write something in on the part, or for any other reason, i have to INDIVIDUALLY select each of the bars and untick each one. Tedious.

In reply to by funkygh

Ah, sorry, I understood you were expecting a right click on a range to allow you to toggle multimeasure rests off for that range using the M shortcut. In fact the range selection remains selected after right clicking until you select Measure Properties, after which it collapses to the single measure. And yes, you can (currently) only set measure properties on measure at a time. There some suggestion in the issue tracker to allow properties of a range of measures to be set in one operation like #3183: Break multi-measure rests as a group or #282417: Allow "Exclude from measure count" command for multiple measures at once. Hopefully this will bump them.

A rather clunky workaround exists where you add a text element to each measure and change its colour to be white (or to be more precise, the same colour as the "paper") so that it does not show up. The measure is then treated as not empty. It certainly speeds up the process as you can add such an element to one measure, then press R as many times as you want to copy it to subsequent measures. Some users create and add such an "invisible but present" text item to a pallet. It can also be used to prevent individual empty staves from being hidden when hide empty staves is selected. One difficulty is that is then easy to forget you added the "invisible" text and wonder why those measures will not collapse into a multimeasure rest even though break multimeasure rest is not ticked.

In reply to by funkygh

It's true that setting the break mutlimeasure rest property on sixteen consecutive measures is currently tedious. Howeve,r it should also be exceedingly rare. Can you explain the real world use case for this, ideally by attaching your actual score? Chances are good that whatever it is you are trying to accomplish is more easily done a different way.

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