bar split (non technical)

• Mar 14, 2018 - 02:03

In music notation, is it okay to split a bar at any beat and move the rest down to the next line and be inconsistent at which beat to split from line to line? This dummy melody of an irregular meter lyrics shows I need to cut the bar at different beats for line 1 and 2 to have a complete sentences in each line so it doesn't wrap to the next line. Is this okay to do in music notation?

I hope it's not too silly of a question. I'm writing an actual melody to fit a poem with very irregular meters.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments

jeetee

• Mar 14, 2018 - 08:41

It's most definitely OK and happens quite a lot in vocal scores.

What I would advise to do is make the barline of the first incomplete bar (now at the end of the system) invisible. Select it and press 'V' once, then click outside of it. MuseScore will show it as light-grey, but it won't be visible in print (or when you turn off View → Show Invisble)
To me that makes it more clear that the bar is unfinished/incomplete and continues on the next system.