Getting dotted Half instead of whole Rest in 3/4

• Nov 12, 2019 - 12:07

Hello all

I'm using 2.3.2 (latest compatible with my machine) and trying to insert a whole rest in 3/4 time to voice #2, and for some reason I cannot figure out how to make it appear just as a whole rest, instead keep getting a dotted half. I know it's essentially the same thing, but I believe it's less ambiguous having a whole rest, and plus that's how it's rendered in the score I'm reproducing.

Sorry if this has been asked before, I did a couple searches but couldn't seem to find anything

Also I've noticed that when moving the rests within a measure they disappear or becomes un-selectable (instead it will just select the whole meassure) unless you move it a little bit at a time (selecting and deselecting every few movements). Is this a known bug? Is there a solution?

cheers


Comments

A whole rest takes up 4 beats and doesn't fit into a 3/4 measure. What you're likely referring to is called a measure rest. It uses the same musical symbol of a whole rest, but is center aligned in the measure instead of left aligned (as the whole rest would be). A measure rest always lasts as long as the measure, whichever time signature/beat count it might have.

See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/measure-rests#measure-rest-other-voic… for how to convert a rest of the full duration (your dotted half rest) into a full measure rest.

I've not heard of the moving rests issue before, but then again I also hardly see the need for moving rests within a measure? Can you elaborate on your use case and why you need to move the rest? Perhaps an alternative approach can be used.

In reply to by jeetee

Rests can indeed sometimes disappear when moving them manually a "long" distance, never really understood what is going on. But I suspect it's only being noticed here because of an attempt to move a whole rest to the center to make it look like a measure rest, or vice versa.

To be clear: measure rests (the thing that looks like a whole rest but is centered in the measure) is normally already present in a measure by default, no need to enter it manually. but it can be necessary in a few cases (like to get one in a voice other than 1) and the Ctrl+Shift+Delete trick works well for that. Also exchanging voices (possibly twice).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

You are of course correct in your expressed supposition regarding how I noticed the disappearing rests. It sounds like this is a known bug with no known solution? I'm constantly moving rests in re-creating this edition of a Beethoven conductor score, which has multiple parts per voice. I don't recall them so disappearing when I started out in Muse 1. In any case, no big deal.

Ctrl+shift+del was the perfect solution, ty. Not sure what you meant by exchanging voices as an alternative solution, but nonetheless, it seems like the aforementioned should suffice.

Thanks Marc

In reply to by DesignLov3

It's a glitch that the rest disappears, but a glitch that fixes itself immediately, and it only happens when doing something you shouldn't normally ever be doing in the first place (long distance mvoes of rests).

Exchanging voices is in Tools / Voices. The idea being, enter notes into voice 1, then exchange 1 & 2, which moves the notes to 2 but leaves a full measure rest in 1, then exchange back. Now you'll have your original notes in 1, and the full measure rest in 2.

In reply to by jeetee

HI Jeetee, and thanks for your comment. The reason for moving is in instances where two voices are expressed in one line (for instance Bassoon 1 and Bassoon 2 on the same stave in a conductor's score anytime they depart from playing the same line). When entering the second voice, if there's rests in it, they don't always automatically get placed in such a way as to correspond rhythmically with the other voice (at least in my experience). I think this has especially been true with whole rests, and perhaps by using this full-measure-rest instead, that problem will be resolved.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I never knew such a distinction existed! I just figured a whole rest was so named because it took up the whole measure (lol). Which makes me curious, if that's a long existing and well known distinction in terms of music history or peculiar to the days of music notation software, etc. In any case, thank you for your help as always

Steve

In reply to by DesignLov3

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rest_(music)

One-bar rests

When an entire bar is devoid of notes, a whole (semibreve) rest is used, regardless of the actual time signature.[4] The only exceptions are for a 4/2 time signature (four half notes per bar), when a double whole rest is typically used for a bar's rest, and for time signatures shorter than 3/16, when a rest of the actual measure length would be used.[5] For a 4/2 bar rest, it is also common to use the whole rest instead of the double whole rest, so that a whole-bar rest for all time signatures starting from 3/16 is notated using a whole note rest.[5] Some published (usually earlier) music places the numeral "1" above the rest to confirm the extent of the rest.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I guess what I was trying to say, was along the lines of, for instance, if you pointed to a full measure rest in 3/4 to to a composer in the 1700's, and asked him what it was called, if he would refer to it simply as a whole rest, or would know that it was actually called by a different name on account of the time signature, namely a full measure rest instead; or if such nomenclatural distinction is peculiar to our day, and came about with the advent of notation software.

In reply to by DesignLov3

Long before anyone had a computer in their home I was playing music in school and I knew what a measure rest was in all time signatures. If you look on imslp.org for music dating back to the 1600's ( a couple of years before I was born) you will see measure rests written into the scores rather than a series of shorter rests when the time signature is less than 4/4.

In reply to by mike320

Yes, understood, and agreed. My point was if they'd know that a whole rest goes by a different name if it has more or less than four beats (at which point it's evidently referred to instead as a full-meassure rest) even though it's the same symbol, or if this distinction in name, based on number of beats, is modern convention.

In reply to by mike320

Well, I certainly see tons of what are commonly referred to as "whole rests" but are technically measure rests - the centered version that always fulls a measure regardless of time signature. What I'm saying is, most musc teachers, music textbooks don't make the distinction - they simply use the term "whole rest" to mean what is actually a measure rest. The book used a textbook for the university course I am teaching right now does this - like you say, a picture of a whole note, right next to it a picture of a measure rest (centered) but labeled "whole rest". So sounds like your memory of how you were taught is identical to my memory of how I was taught, and is identical to how the textbook I am using teaches it - calling them all "whole rests".

It's the idea that the same rectangle-hanging-from-line-4 means something different - and potentially has different names - depending on whether it is centered or not that isn't very widely known. Most teachers and books call it a whole rest whether it is centered or not. Sometimes it is explained that a whole rest is different from a whole note in that the whole note is always exactly four quarter notes long but a whole rest is however long the measure is, sometimes this is completely glossed over.

If you insist on using dotted half rests, you can select a rest and press 5 the the period or decimal to change the rest. You can then select the measure and press R a few times. You can then select all of these measures and press R to fill the score faster.

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