Addition of a series of quavers fouls up score.

• Jan 19, 2012 - 21:14

I have been creating the parts for a piece for 3 horns so that I can arrange it for other (non-transposing) instruments and encountered a couple of problems.
1. There seemed to be no way to create a score in split common, and with a quaver anacrusis, in the initial settings. I tried to get round this by using 2/2 but any attempt to change that to split common added rests after the first note to make up a full bar. Ctrl-Z reverted it correctly but left me with 2/2.
2. Having worked my way into the score I added several bars of quavers in the 2nd part in order to spread out the bars. Moving to the end of the entered music in the first part I tried to add a dotted minim but it came out as six tied quaver at the start of six consecutive bars. Other methods also failed to give the desired results. Stupidly, I saved the file using Ctrl-S, closed MuseScore and reopened it and reloaded the file which gave me a complete mishmash of note and barlines in the middle of bars. Attempts to play the work came up with what appeared to notes played in a semi random order. Attempts to copy parts of the score into a new file failed abysmally.
I tried loading the back-up file but it was so old that most of my work was not there. This was odd as I had set the back-up autosave to2 minutes.
I guess I have to accept that I am going to have to start all over again but I would like to know if anyone can explain why the score became corrupted.

Regards,
Chris M.


Comments

I have had a look at the attachment, and I'm afraid the score has become badly corrupted :(

For some reason MuseScore has defined the actual time signature for a load of bars as 1/8!

I tried redefining to 2/2 but only increased the mess :(

Regarding your anacrusis problem - MuseScore is currently incorrectly inserting a 4/4 time signature for the Alla Breve/Cut Time symbol, so an issue needs opening on that unless someone has already done so.

All I can suggest is that you use a 2/2 time signature, make it invisible and then import Cut Time symbols via the graphic import facility

HTH
Michael

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

Thanks Michael.

Much as I don't like what you are telling me it's what I was expecting. Since downloading Muse a few days ago, I have created several individual parts and learned fairly quickly (which is more than I can say about my wife's Cappella) and I had already managed part of the score of the first mov't of the Reicha so I suspect the anacrusis of mucking up. I'll have a look in the morning to see if this problem has been reported already. I did have a quick look earlier but didn't see it.

With best wishes,
Chris.

Regarding the corruption - if you by some miracle remember the exact series of steps that got you into this this, so that others could follow the same process and reproduce the problem, that would help in getting it fixed. Usually, though, it's next to impossible to remember exactly what we did, and thus it's hard to nail down these occasional corruption problems.

If it's any consolation, my experience is that most of the nastiest bugs happen when one is still in the early stages of learning MuseScore and trying all sorts of thing that aren't supposed to work anyhow. Not that they *should* cause corruption, of course, but the good news is that as you get a better handle on how things work and stop trying to do things that aren't going to work anyhow, you start seeing these issues less.

I'm not sure I understand the original problem involving the time signature, though. Maybe it's a US versus British thing (like quaver versus eighth note), but I've never heard of "split common". Is that just what we Americans call "cut time" (2/2 with a time signature that looks lke C with a line through it)? If so, while you might not have that option during score creation, you can certain change to that time signature after creating the score. And while you can't make your pickup be a fraction of a beat, you can make the actual time signature of the pickup measure 1/4, enter a *leading* quaver rest, then your actual pickup, then make the leading rest invisible.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, though. If there is something you are still having trouble doing when you start as you (as you unfortunately will need to), could you try to explain again what you want to see?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

In the UK we also call it "Cut Time" as far as I know unless we use the proper technical name - Alla Breve.

One of the problems here is that adding the Cut Time symbol currently turns the time signature into 4/4 which is incorrect.

Also that there is no means of entering Cut Time from the Create Score dialogue unless there is an option in Prefrerences I don't know about.

I shall be opening an issue on the Cut Time symbol creating the wrong time signature shortly unless someone has already done it.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi. Your message came through while I was typing my response to Michael.

As it happens I do know exactly what I was doing!!!! What is slightly more difficult is remembering what I had done earlier that might have set up the conditions. As I need to get to bed, I will do that in the morning. Yes, Split Common time is the C with a line through it. I'll address the rest of your message tomorrow as I nodding off here.

With best wishes from a Scottish island,,
Chris

In reply to by ChrisM

From Wikipedia. 'The symbol cut time, a "semicircle" with a vertical line through is ... a carry-over from the notational practice of late-Medieval and Renaissance music, where it signified tempus imperfectum diminutum (diminished imperfect time)—more precisely, a doubling of the speed [of common time], or proportio dupla, in duple meter. In modern notation, it is used in place of 2/2 and is called "alla breve" or, colloquially, "cut time" or "cut common time".' From another article: 'The name 'split' comes from the timing with which the stroke is most commonly used; being 'split-common' time (2/2).' (sorry about the confusion of inverted commas.) I learned the expression at school in the mid 1950's. Anyway, to my problem.

Responding to Marc.
I had completed entering all three parts up to the point where the 2nd horn had several bars of quavers (1/8th notes) and tested the score by playing through it, finding just one wrong note. At that stage I decided to enter the quavers using the keyboard rather than the note entry method using the mouse. This was achieved with no apparent errors. Moving to the 1st Horn part I tried to enter a minim (1/2 note). Instead of a minim, MuseScore entered a series of tied quavers to the value of a minim and one per bar (bearing out Michael's 1/8.

Prior to that sequence of strokes, I twice tried to replace the 2/2 with the Alle Breve symbol but, as mentioned, this just put the anacrusis at the beginning of a full bar. Both times a Ctrl-Z worked as expected. That just about sums up keystrokes and mouse clicks etc.

I take your point about learning. MS shut dwn several times in my earlier attempts to enter data but always re-opened at the point where it had shut down so nothing was lost apart from the very last action.

Both Michael and Marc suggested ways to get round the anacrusis malfunction and I will try these out. However, I will address the original problem by opening a fault report if necessary. Also, I have appended the back-up file from earlier as requested.

To ChurchOrganist.
I suspect that names have changed over the years (like composing is now known as "inventing" in schools). Anyway, from now on it's Alla Breve. Certainly I never came across the term "cut time". If you are going to raise the problem of starting up with Alla Breve, bear in mind that this applies to all the non-numerical time signatures.

With thanks and best wishes to all,
Chris.

In reply to by ChrisM

Unfortunately, it's not enough to have a description of the overall process. Even if you try to follow your steps above, starting from scratch (or a a known non-corrupt score), it is unlikely you will reproduce the problem, because the steps aren't listed specifically enough. Eg, which *specific* notes did you try to enter, and in what order ("step one: click on third quaver of bar 2, then press N, then press the following sequence of keys to enter notes...")? More importantly, I suspect, would be the specific sequence of steps you used in trying out the various time signatures and creating the anacrusis ("step one: create a new score with anacrusis 1/4 and time signature 2/2, then drag cut time symbol to bar zero, then hit undo, then drag to bar one, then bring up measure properties, then ..."). The corruption is probably tied to a very specific sequence of actions.

I'm not faulting you; I'm just trying to give you a better idea of what is really needed. I don't expect that what I am describing will be possible at all - it might take many hours trying to find the *exact* sequence, and it's entirely possible you'd never find it. So I don't certainly don't expect or even recommend that you try. If it were easy, these bugs would have been sorted out long ago, I'm sure! But as a former programmer, I know that until one can get the steps so specific that anyone could follow the same sequence and get the same results, it usually doesn't help much.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi Marc.

I only just read your comment as I didn't get an email to say that you had replied to my last. You are, of course, right. I could not create the full sequence of key-ins from the creation of the piece. I have repeated the immediate sequence before the crash without any problems and have gone on the enter further material. The only major change was to start with a 1/8 bar followed by the Alla Breve. I think the comment about getting lots of crashes as a beginner applied. Now I am more familiar with the application and am no longer crashing it. I've done some programming myself in several languages, Assembler and even in machine code direct and have first hand experience of failure! Same must apply here as well (and on some of my web pages a well!).

Once again, thanks to all who have helped.

All the best,
Chris.

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