change mid-measure

• May 11, 2012 - 02:29

Key changes always place themselves at the beginning of the measure.
How do I make a key change mid-measure?
see attached.
Thanks

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Comments

In reply to by sunnisuz

Normally you don't change key mid-measure - if you want to do this you will have to use accidentals until the next barline.

Conventional notation does not allow for it, therefore neither does MuseScore.

Why do you need to do this? If it's in some sheet music you're transcribing, can you upload a pic?

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

Is this how it works?
The last couple of notes in the measure immediately before the key change, are adjusted if necessary, (flats made naturals, etc) to 'lead' into the key change.

Next time I have a problem, I'd better check music theory first to see if what I want to do is 'legal'.

Thanks.

In reply to by sunnisuz

I think so, but I'm still not really clear on what you're trying to do.

Conventionally change to a new key would take place at the beginning of the bar. Anything in the previous bar which needed to be altered to cope with the new key would be made sharp, flat or natural, and regarded as a bridge to the new key.

Take Lloyd-Webber's "Love changes everything" for example: It's structure is thus -

Intro: Key A major 4 bars
Verse 1: Key A major 20 bars
Verse 2: Key A major 20 bars
Bridge: 4 bars last 2 beats of 4th bar chord of F7 the F and C in the chord would have naturals and the Eb a flat
Verse 3: Key Bb Major 20 bars
Coda: Key Bb 7 bars

Don't be afraid to ask here even if your music theory knowledge is limited - there are enough experienced musicians in the community to help you with this. Most of us are not judgmental in any way, and merely want to help newcomers to MuseScore.

HTH
Michael

In reply to by sunnisuz

Yes. In theory, a key change might occur mid-measure, but i've never heard of anyone notating it that way. Instead, as others have suggested, one would normally use accidentals to introduce the key change, then put the actual new key signature in the first full bar of the new key. I think that's probably for good reason - the rules about how accidentals work (lasting for the duration of the measure) would become extremely confusing if the key signature were allowed to change in the middle of the measure. Even if it were technically "legal", it would be extremely inadvisable.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I agree with Marc.

It is not common practice to change the key mid-measure. Rather go with accidentals, and then change it at the end of the measure.

However, a workaround could be to create two shorter measures, make one of them "irregular" (see the MuseScore Handbook) so as to not count toward the total number of measures, and then hide the barline/

Hope that helps!

E

Whatever is done should make the playing of the passage obvious to the player; it shouldn't be one of those "what's going on here" moments. Normally, established rules for notation minimize such moments. I'll even go so far as to say computer score generation has helped in this regard since it isn't so easy to write outside the bounds of rules as it is with a pencil. Of course, it doesn't always work that way!

If the intent is to make an exact copy of an existing score, that's a different game.

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