Unusual time signature

• Nov 11, 2022 - 00:05

I have a piece by Bartok that has a time signature written as 2/8+3/8+3/8. Can I create that in musescore, and if so how?


Comments

Create a new time signature using the button the "More" section of the time signature palette. Have it be 8/8, but use the settings in the dialog to get it to display as 2+3+3 over 8 (or over 8+8+8).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

That works, thanks!

In that piece many measures contain a quarter note followed by two notes that are 3 eights in length. the first of those is rendered as a quarter note tied to an eighth note, whereas the next is a dotted quarter note. Is there a way to have both rendered as dotted quarter notes?

I thought I saw somewhere (in published music) 6/8 + 3/4 in the first measure... Then, throughout the piece, it was understood & notated that the meters continually alternated. From "Man of La Mancha", the aria 'Dulcinea' is the best example I recall. However, I can't find anything other than explicitly swapping meters, as in the image attached.

How a composer who wants 6/8 + 3/4 to show up in MuseScore -- I don't know.

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dulcinea.png 88.46 KB

In reply to by Are Jayem

See my response above - you can control the display of the time signature in time signature properties. You can't currently get 6/8 + 3/4, but you can get 6+3 / 8+4, which will convey the same thing. You could also just hide the time signature but then construct a fake one out of Symbols or Special Characters within text.

BTW, I hadn't thought of that song as involving alternating meters before, and really the melody lays just as naturally in 6/8 pretty much the whole way through. I guess the accompaniment has more of a dense of switching. The clearer example to me is "America" from "West Side Story", where everything changes in sync.

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