Changing 12/8 to 4/4

• Nov 7, 2019 - 21:39

I'm trying to turn a jazz piece that I arranged from 12/8 to 4/4, but the only thing that changes is the tie signature and measures, but not the notation to be like 4/4 and not 12/8. Is there a way to turn the whole piece into 4/4 without having to re-enter everything?

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Gospel_of_Dismay.mscz 308.18 KB

Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

it is a very dreamed automation processing asked to the development team!!!

Also, it is related with the double/half time duration of a part or whole piece. This took a long time, but... It is a reality, now!

Maybe... Someday... When the elephants fly... Hahahahahaha!!!

In reply to by jotape1960

There is an undocumented paste special command. You must define a shortcut for it yourself.

Copy a section of notes
press a duration (like a dotted 8th note)
use the Paste special shortcut
You now have 12/8 measures that have been shortened to a 4/4 measures

Dumbo is in the house!

P.S. I didn't mention this previously because I'm not convinced this is what the OP wants.

In reply to by jotape1960

This is the only place. Like I said, it's not documented. This is mostly because it was a bi-product of the paste half and paste double duration commands. It's also flawed. If you use this on a score, all of the rehearsal marks and repeats will be misplace and you must manually fix these. Most other system items will also be misplaced. There will probably be problems with some tuplets. I haven't tested it sufficiently to know.

The way it works is this. To paste exactly what you copy, press the 1/4 note. If you want to make everything 3 times as long press the dotted 1/2 note (3 beats). If you want everything 2/3 as long as in the original question, make the duration a dotted 8th note. What you paste is always in relation to the 1/4 note.

In reply to by mike320

Probably this will not work in this case, since often when converting from 12/8 to 4/4 you want to convert from "explicit triple feel" to "implicit triple feel" where the first two 1/8 notes in a "triplet", or actually the 1/4 note, is changed into just a 1/8 note, and the third 1/8 note in the triplet should stay a 1/8 note. Wherever you have three 1/8 notes on a beat, you need to add an explicit triplet. etc

In reply to by AndreasKågedal

That's what I was thinking when I saw the question and realized there is no capability for this in MuseScore. Simply shortening every note does not truly convert a piece in 8 to a piece in 4. The feel of the songs should change and robotically shortening every note doesn't do that.

In reply to by jotape1960

I would say sometimes. As the OP pointed out, the only substitution for 3 8th notes is a triplet. Though not unheard of they are a bit unusual in Jazz and I'm not convinced that the purpose of changing 12/8 to 4/4 would be to keep the same feel for the song. Perhaps changing the swing feel that is inherent in 12/8 time to straight 8th notes might be more of the goal.

In reply to by mike320

Even if you don't want to change the "feel", you might want to change from 12/8 to 4/4 since for the average jazz musician it is way more easy to read and play with swing feel from a regular 4/4 arrangement since this is much more common. Having beats happening each 1+1/2 (which is the case for 12/8) requires some getting used to.

This is old but I found the most simple answer, I think. Highlight the 12/8 measure you wish to change. Go to the time signature drop down and change it firstly to 3/4. Then change it again to 4/4. There you go.

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