Measure numbering convention
Sorry for a dumb question. I am novice to notation. What is the convention for numbering the measures of a piece? Should the starting measure be "0" or "1"? I see both used here in the few scores I've downloaded. It gets confusing if I want to find a particular measure in a piece by using "control F" and typing in the number of the measure.
For example in this score https://musescore.com/musemeister/bach_1004 , the beginning measure is "0", (however, it's not labeled as such). If I want to find measure 5, it finds measure 4 according to the label above the staff.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Solo_Violin_Partita_No._2_in_D_Minor_-_J._S._Bach_BWV_1004.mscz | 96.37 KB |
Comments
Neither. The numbering itself starts with 1, but that is (almost) never shown.
Also pickup measures are normally excluded from measure count, so the count starts at the 1st complete measure.
Normally it's 1 as far as what is printed on the score, unless it's a pickup measure - like a song in 3/4 that starts with a measure containing only a single beat (eg, "Home on the Range" - "Oh, give me a home...").
But in these cases, it still gets counted internally, so the Find command can be off by one from the printed measure number.