gray + and - at the end of measure and added gray rests and return arrow

• Feb 11, 2024 - 05:23

What are the gray + and - at the top of the measure line. They appeared when I uploaded a sheet of music using the convert to musescore feature. Also some gray colored rests are showing up that weren't on the original music sheet. They are not black like when you add them yourself. I couldn't remove the rests for some reason. They throw off the rhythm so I need to remove them but I haven't figured it out. Has anyone had this happen? Do you know how to remove the rests that were added in? Also what's the little gray "return" arrow at the top inside a dotted square? Is there a video or something dealing with this?


Comments

> Has anyone had this happen?
This often happens when importing PDF files into MuseScore. It is due to the imperfect work of optical music recognition, especially if the PDF is not perfect. For example, if the flag of an eighth note is not recognized, it is recognized as a quarter note and the measure is already an eighth too long. A common mistake. I think this happened in measure 5 of the second piano, where the rightmost note should probably be an eighth note.

There are commercial programs that are better here. However, these do not guarantee error-free recognition.
Audiveris (online) works behind the import function. This is a free program that you can also use locally on your computer and you can then correct some potential errors. However, it is not very easy to use ...

> Do you know how to remove the rests that were added in?
You have to proceed differently depending on the situation. The easiest way is to insert a new measure, write the correct notes there by hand and then delete the wrong measure with Ctrl+Del. This actually works in almost all cases. If it is ensured that all note lines in the measure have an additional rest, then you can also select these and delete them with Ctrl+Del. But it doesn't work in your example in measure 5. If it is correct that the last note in measure 5 should be an eighth note (I don't know the original), then you can change it to an eighth note (select and press '4') and then delete the extra rest with Ctrl+Del.

> Also what's the little gray "return" arrow at the top inside a dotted square?
This is simply a system break. You can select it and delete it. Or you can add more by selecting a measure and pressing enter. This works like creating a new paragraph in a word processing program. See also the "Breaks & Spacers" palette.

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