Not allowed to remove a barline

• Sep 25, 2019 - 01:41

I'm trying to tidy up measures. To do so I need to remove a barline that creates a measure with one note in it. The program isn't allowing me to do it. On a Mac, I've been using command + delete to get rid of unwanted bar-lines.

The other thing that's annoying is that sometimes when I remove one barline, it removes all of them for that two or three measures of that staff. Below is an example. See fourth line of second page.

NOT FOUND: Florida_Man_Blues.mscz

PS You folks have been very helpful.


Comments

Hmm, do you mean for this to have different durations for almost every measure? It's a valid thing to want to do in certain cases, but somehow I wonder if you are doing this on purpose, because it isn't making sense to me here. This would normally be done for music that is not meant to have any meter at all. Is that really your goal here?

Anyhow, I'm looking at the fourth line on the second page. I see three ordinary 4/4 measures, and I didn't have any trouble removing barliens to create one big long 12/4 measure if that's what you really want. Nor was there a problem removing the last barline on the system.

But the third line is one big long measure. It looks lie you added a mid measure barline in an attempt to break up a very long measure, but that's not the same as actually splitting the measure - the barline is visual only.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc,

The reason for jockeying with the barlines is to get all measures into 4/4. That's the phase I'm in now. The way I typically do that is to not slow down the composition process by fussing over measure length as I go along, but rather I return later and clean them up. So in a measure that has three beats I will remove the concluding barline, add notes or rests in some cases, then insert a new barline in the proper place.

ANOTHER PROBLEM:
In the attached I used insert mode to add a half note rest to the last measure on the top line of page 2. In the process of doing that I got a default quarter rest added to the beginning of the following measure. When I attempt to get rid of that rest using command + delete on my Mac, all remaining measures of the song vanish. Not what I intended. How can I avoid having that happen?

THANKS. Florida_Man_Blues7.1.mscz

In reply to by cnye

While technically it does work to do things in the way you describe, it's going to be a more difficult process, because you are fighting what MuseScore wants to do naturally - help you keep everything in 4/4 right from the beginning. The features you are using - join and splitting measures by adding and removing barliens, use of insert mode - was really intended for a totally different purpose: creating music that does not obey standard time signatures. So the way the commands work is optimized for those use cases, not the usage you are attempting to make them work in. It's kind of like using a screwdriver where a hammer is called for or vice versa - you can eventually of get the job done, but the process won't be as smooth as it could be, and there is much more risk of introducing errors, both on your part (the mid-measure barline you apparently added unintentionally) or on MuseScore's (the corruption that has now entered your score - see the error message on load of the version you just posted). That corruption is a bug, but in order to investigate, we'd need to know exactly how it happened - the precise steps that led to the corruption

I don't see the specific rest you are talking about - there are no quarter rests on the top line of page 2 of the first measure of the next line - but my guess is whatever the problem is you are seeing is connected to the corruption reported. So you'll need to fix that first. The usual procedures for fixing corruptions are based more on standard use of measures and time signatures, but see [#54721] and maybe you'll be able to figure something out to fix this.

So, while it should in theory still work, I will say that in the answer to questions of the form "How can I avoid having that happen" is not to do things the way you are, as it invites errors.

In reply to by cnye

If you've notated all as it should be and only wish to restore it into 4/4 then the following approach might be easier for you:
1. Select all you have notated
2. Cut
3. Add a single measure
(3b. insert 4/4 time signature for the new measure if it isn't already in 4/4 time)
4. Select that final measure
5. Paste
6. Select old measures
7. Ctrl-Del them

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