Rests in compound time
This is partly a question about notation practice, and then about Musescore's default behaviour. I "did" music theory in England, about 1963. (Grade V theory, to get O level, I think.)
My recollection is that we did not do dotted rests; in other words, we wrote a whole beat of 6/8 with two rests as in the example above, bar 1. But I am quite accustomed to reading dotted rests (as in bar 2). I'm using Gardner Read's book "Music notation" as reference; this was published in the US in 1969, and talks about using dotted rests as "very convenient", without any mention of traditional styles. Does anyone else remember anything like this, or whether this is a US/UK difference, or whatever?
But anyway, I'm happy to use a dotted crotchet rest. However, Read supports my belief that this should only be for a whole beat, and moreover that a crotchet rest should only be used for the first 2/3 of a beat. So all the examples in bars 3, 4, 5 are wrong. In other words, rests should not cross beat boundaries, unless they cover a whole number of beats.
But Musescore annoyingly always provides the wrong version, which I have to correct. Is this by design, by oversight, or is it a bug?
But Musescor
Comments
MuseScore know about how to beam, but not about how or whether to split or join notes and rests across beats. You can call it a shortcomming, but probably not a bug
In reply to MuseScore know about how to… by Jojo-Schmitz
OK thanks. So it should be a feature request then... I would be happy to think about exactly what is needed. It is not entirely simple to decide whether a time signature is compound.
In reply to OK thanks. So it should be a… by Imaginatorium
And it isn't even restricted to compound meters, thing a quarter note on the 2-and in 4/4, it should be split into 2 tied 8ths. Or to 8th retsts, not a quarter rest.
Seems an easy way to describe this is to just use the beaming rules? If a beam would get split, the note/rest should too, if there would be a beam, note/rest should be joined. Too simple?
In reply to And it isn't even restricted… by Jojo-Schmitz
For rests: If it can be done in the future, it would be a good improvement if the compound time note entry also follows the beaming rules.
In reply to MuseScore know about how to… by Jojo-Schmitz
We do actually determine simple vs compound time for a few other purposes (choosing a default behavior for tempo markings, for example). I don't think it would be that hard to come up with and implement good rules for rests. I would say from some experience in that part of the code it would probably not be "elegant", more like handling each special case one at a time until the results seem good enough.
In reply to We do actually determine… by Marc Sabatella
Well, one point is that you can only guess simple/compound. Something in 6/8 could turn out to be in sextuple time. And there's a Scriabin prelude in 15/8 which is not compound quintuple, but tripe time with each beat being 5 semiquavers. The simple/compound terminology probably breaks down there...
In reply to Well, one point is that you… by Imaginatorium
Or Dave Brubeck "Blue Rondo a la Turk",
in 9/8 as 2+2+2+3 for most measures (some are 3+3+3).
We can see beam groups, which helps. But really, guessing is good enough. If sometimes we guess wrong (as we always do now for compound meter), worst is you need to enter the rests yourself as you do currently.
I have in the paste suggested that the user be allowed to define rests in a manner similar to beaming when time signatures are edited. I thought I put it in the issue tracker, but I'm not finding it right now.
In reply to I have in the paste… by mike320
Is there a separate set of rules needed or is the beaming rules enough already (and could just get used for rests too)?
In reply to Is there a separate set of… by Jojo-Schmitz
There are default rest patterns for some time signatures, though I don't know where the rules come from. In most compound time signatures, the 1/4 & 8th rests are backwards from what I see in my scores (I don't care what Gould or anyone else says is correct) so I would like to be able to reverse the order of the rests globally rather than having to go through and change the order on all of them. Having the same order in the PDF on MuseScore makes it much easier to notice errors. It would also allow rests to be defined in custom time signatures.
In reply to There are default rest… by mike320
The default right now ignores compound completely, it adds rests using the same rules as simple meter. So it's wrong two-thirds of the time, right one-third :-). I tend to not worry about this as I almost invariably enter my rests left to right while I'm entering notes and seldom just accept the defaults rests. But I would welcome someone going in and improving the defaults for compound meter.