More Rigorous Rest Conflation

• Jun 24, 2018 - 15:46

MuseScore's pretty good with conflating rests correctly as per type of meter that may be chosen.

A 6/8 is traditionally grouped as two dotted crotchets (two dotted quarter notes).

Imagine users' horror when they see litterings of this in MuseScore from a MusicXML import:

fragmented_rests.gif

...The pair of quaver (eighth-note) rests in each bar should appear as a single crotchet (quarter-note). MuseScore could be programmed to save users from having to correct errors like this.

MuseScore is still very, very brilliant.


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

It does, but it's an extra step, and not perfect. Actually, though, in the given example, many if not most editors (eg, Gould) would say it is proper to use two eighth (quaver) rests, and that's what we do with "Regroup Rhythms". But anyhow, it would be nice if the autofill understood compound meter so entering a single eighth note into an empty measure of 6/8 produced something that looks like 6/8 instead of what looks like 3/4.

BTW, though, if you are seeing the two eighth rests in a MusicXML import, that's because it as that way in the MusicXML file too - MuseScore doesn't change what it sees. So apparently the program that exported the MusicXML agrees with MuseScore and with some other experts that two eighth rests are preferable to a quarter rest in this situation. To me, it's good that MuseScore honors what it sees in the original and doesn't try to change it. But it should be better about how it handles user input.

See also #4867: Rests in measures should be grouped according to time signature. Now that we have code that knows how to do the "right" grouping for compound meter, it would be nice to see it used during note entry.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I thought I had put in a feature request at some point to allow the user to set a rest pattern much like they can the beaming pattern in a custom time signature but I'm not finding it right now. MuseScore does not agree with most compound meters I've run into doing transcriptions and I almost always have to change the order of the 1/4 & 1/8 rests to make them match. This would allow the user the define his/her own time signature and the 1/4 + 1/8 rest could be turned into a dotted 1/4 if desired.

In reply to by mike320

Setting rest grouping would be lovely indeed, makes perfect sense to handle it similarly as far as setting defaults go. If nothing else, we could also consider using the existing beam grouping as a better starting point than what we do now. I haven;t really looked at the "regroup rhythms" code to understand if/how it interacts with beam grouping.

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