Unable to insert bar in 3/4 time

• Jan 30, 2021 - 11:41

When I attempt to insert one bar in 3/4 time I get a message telling me that "the tuplet cannot cross the bar line". All I have done is to drag the 3/4 symbol from the menu to bar 11 in the attached score.

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Wind_Quintet copy.mscz 33.53 KB

Comments

There are quite a bunch of tuplets a couple measure later, 16-18, 28-29 and 50.
Those in 28-29 are the culprit a 12-let covering the entire 4/4 measure

When you insert a 3/4 it makes the whole score from then on 3/4 and this would cause tuplets later in the score to cross barlines.

Try inserting a blank measure [Add >Bars <“Insert“ One Bar] and then putting a 4/4 into the next measure and then a 3/4 onto the inserted measure. This will actually give you two new 3/4 measures but you can delete one of them.

Thanks to you all. The 12 note tuplet was used because, in my experience, performers lightly accent the first note of 1/4 note triplets and I need a 'clear run' of even notes.

I'm going to
reply here simply because of the reference to this topic you made in https://musescore.org/en/node/140771#comment-1103859 in which you were wondering whether anyone ever looked into your issue here. The obvious reply here is of course yes; you've got your answer (including the reason) a mere 22 minutes after your question.

Now part of the troubles here seems to be that you did not expect MuseScore to honor musical notation when you applied a new time signature to bar 11. To quote you:
> "I KNOW that commands in one part of a score affect later parts of the score because of a problem, described above, involving a tuplet. Did anyone get on to that"
Which to give full context was a further confirmation on your end of the statement you made earlier in that topic:
> " I suggest that actions in one part of a score affect those in a (much) later part of the score in unexpected ways and that this is possibly the source of the problem."

I for one do not find it unexpected that a change in time signature affects everything that follow until a new time signature indication is encountered; simply because that is how music notation itself works. Just like I expect that when I enter a key signature change, that it'd be in effect from that point onwards.
Or if I applied a tempo marking that my musicians (and MuseScore) would apply that tempo from that point on, and not just on that single note/chord/rest to which the marking is attached.

Now where I can understand the confusion is that key and time signatures are restored after being applied if you first select a range; but only if that range is more than a single measure. (cfr. https://musescore.org/en/node/154036#comment-637691 and https://musescore.org/en/node/154016#comment-627566). I would like to see this also work on a single-measure range selection, which would be perfect for the use case you've displayed here.

To be clear though, I don't find that MuseScore is changing the score much later in an unexpected way at all when applying a new time signature, as this is consistent with how time signatures work.. In fact, there reason you got this error is exactly because MuseScore did not try to rewrite that tuplet into a split version to make the new barline position work out.

In reply to by John Morton

Indeed, but as already explained, not all tuplets are mathematically / musically possible in all time signatures. The combination you were trying to create is such an example - it was a tuplet with a total duration of four beats. You simply cannot have a four-beat tuplet in a measure of 3/4, and that is why the operation failed, just as the error message informed you.

If the goal is to have only one bar of 3/4 rather than changing the entire rest of the score to 3/4, you can't get that by adding 3/4 to the score directly - not because of a limitation in MuseScore, but because that is how music notation works. The rules of music notation say that a time signature applies to all subsequent measures until the end or until the next time signature change. So yes, adding 3/4 affects the rest of the score, because there is no next time signature change - exactly as the rules of music notation require. So instead of adding the 3/4 directly, simply add a 4/4 to the following measure first. Then add the 3/4 to the original measure, and it will apply to that measure only because it's followed immediately by a 4/4 - just as the rules of music notation dictate.

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