How do I set measure duration to 3 eighth notes in a 4/4 time signature?
I'm working on a hymn that has a pickup measure and a few measures where the number of beats in the displayed measure are irregular. I saw these 2 links:
http://musescore.org/en/handbook/break-or-spacer
http://musescore.org/en/handbook/measure-operations
Following those instructions I was able to successfully create two measures that had respective durations of 1 quarter note and 3 quarter notes in a 4/4 time signature.
This hymn is in a 4/4 time signature. My situation in this hymn is that to get the line breaks where they naturally occur in the lyric, there are a few measures that have actual measure durations that are not whole numbers. For example, one of the 4/4 measures that I need to split has a half-note tied to an eighth note, followed by a bar, and then 3 eighth notes. The split needs to be at that bar.
Another measure has a lyric where the phrase ends on a dotted-half note tied to an eight note, followed by an eighth note. In that case the bar needs to appear before that last eighth note. I know this is unusual, but as I'm transposing the piece I'm not at liberty to alter the music.
Is there a way to accommodate this via the Measure Properties dialog, and if so what must I do? Thanks.
Comments
Well, you can have line breaks only at barlines, but you can have 'incomplete' or irregular measures. So if you have a e.g. 4/4 measure where you want a line break after the 1st quarter note, add a measure and then via the measure properties dialog change the actualy lenght of the 1st measure to 1/4 and of the 2nd to 3/4, then add the line break to the 1st measure.
You can then either make the barline invisible or change it into a 'dotted' barline (from the barline palette, to indicated it's 'incompletness'
In reply to Well, you can have line by Jojo-Schmitz
See also this thread - http://musescore.org/en/node/14035 - including my caution against doing what you suggest. This might have been a common notation 500 years ago, but it isn't now, and would tend to just confuse most musicians.
In reply to See also this thread - by Marc Sabatella
Actually Marc it is still a common device in church music, mainly for hymns.
It is a great assistance when you have words on one page and music on the other to have the barring fit the verse structure.
It is much easier not to get lost in the music if it is laid out this way.
In fact one of my constant moans is about hymnbooks where the beginning of the line doesn't coincide in words and music.
In reply to Actually Marc it is still a by ChurchOrganist
Hmm, I haven't seen this in any published editions typeset in the last century or two, but perhaps in some religious circles it is still done. So if one knows that the musicians who will be reading this are accustomed to that particular tradition, then fine. And thanks for the information!
But I would still say this is something to be aware of. The vast majority of printed music for the last several centuries is most definitely *not* laid out this way, so *most* musicians would normally expect the beginning of a line to be the beginning of a measure. Breaking up a 4/4 measure and giving that music to someone not steeped in the particular world in which this convention is used would almost without doubt have most people unconcsciously adding an extra beat at the end of the previous line to fill out the measure, then getting confused at the beginning of the next line when they saw what was more obviously only a partial measure. But I could see how congregations who don't necessarily read music and are just following the lyrics might find it clear enough, and perhaps that is why some liturgical editions may do that. So again, if you know that you are writing for an audience accustomed to that convention, then fine, and hopefully the advice given here will show how to do it. Know your audience, and write accordingly, to be sure. But if you don't know for sure who your audience is, then it makes more sense to go with the modern convention that says you don't break up measures across lines like that.