2.0 changed rhythm notation of score created in 1.3

• May 30, 2015 - 23:13

I hope this is something that can be fixed once someone tells me how, but if it's a real bug, it's a bad one.

There are two scores attached. The one entitled SAMM MVT II orig OPEN WITH 1.3.mscz should be opened with MuseScore 1.3 so you can see the original notation.

If you open it with 2.0, you'll see the same thing as in the second score I've attached, and be no wiser. And I just realised: You might have to save the file first and then open it manually with 1.3 if you have 2.0 set as the 'default' app. If anyone has problems with that, let me know and I'll post a pdf of it--but you won't be able to see the code.

That original file was used to create the other score, SAMM MVT II MS2.0.1 Prob.mscz, which I extracted from a composite of the entire concerto (hence the rests in movements I and III). That one was tweaked and saved in 2.0, so it won't open in 1.3.

Here's the problem: 2.0 unilaterally changed the rhythm notation in this movement from 'eighth + quarter' groups to 'eighth + eighth-tied-eighth' groups.

I have two editions of this concerto that I used as sources/references when transcribing the score. The first is the original 17xx MS; the other is a Schott edition published in 1984. Both show the notation the way I entered it in the original 1.3 score.

Is there a global setting I can adjust to make 2.0 'behave' and leave the notes the way I entered them...or is this a bug? I sincerely hope that the latter is not the case; the thought of having to go through it all again note by note, manually adjusting the notation, makes me want to tear my hair out and cuss in four languages simultaneously.


Comments

To start with, your 1.3 score appears to be corrupt - I assume you have seen that message too.

Anyhow, I have opened that score in 1.3 as well as in 2.0. Which measure on which staff am I supposed to look at to see a problem? I guess when you say you "extracted" something from this to create the "Prob" score, you mean you used copy and paste? I tried to copy and paste music from the original score to a new score in 12/8 and it worked fine.

When reporting a problem,. it helps to post precise step by step instructions to reproduce it, otherwise it is very hard for us to know what to look for. In general, rhythms *are* preserved. Without knowing exactly what you did, it is hard to say what might ave happened. A guess might be, you accidentally copied and pasted it to the wrong beat position, so MuseScore had to tied notes over the barline, and then you tried to copy and paste that to the correct position but by then it was too late.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The corrupted part of that original score is those wonky rests in mm 36 and 37 in the solo line (the ones I set as invisible). That mess resulted from me trying to write an unbarred cadenza into an 'irregular' measure, and miscalculating how many beats I'd need. I never solved that problem when I was working on it originally, but as the arrangement was being done for a performance of my own ensemble, I gave up and printed it the way it was and we made the corrections by hand. But that was the first score I ever produced using the program; I'd been running MuseScore for a grand total of about a day and a half when that score was written. I've since learned that the way to correct stubborn stuff like that is to cut the notes, delete the measure, insert a new, clean measure, and then paste the notes back in...which is how I fixed that when I started to rework the score for publication using 2.0. (You'll note that the 'PROB' score opens without the corrupted file warning.)

As for what to look for, take measure 4 as an example: in both the alto and tenor parts, beats 4 and 5 should be a single quarter note; they've been turned into two tied eighths. It goes on like that throughout the score. Sorry I didn't mention that in my initial post, but I thought the problem would be obvious when you looked at the two scores.

I can't be certain, but your guess about how the program changed those quarter notes into tied eighths strikes me as pretty close. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but I have a feeling I either pasted that movement starting in an (inadvertant) pickup measure...or even possibly pasted it into measures with a time sig of 2/4 (from the previous movement). I don't remember if the 12/8 time sig came along with the copy/paste or if I had to put it back in by hand later. (I'm going to guess it didn't, because when I hit CTL+A to select a whole score, the blue box starts AFTER the initial time signature.) But either of those events would certainly have forced the program to reconfigure things.

I guess the real question is, why didn't it reconfigure the rhythms back to the proper form after I corrected whatever my initial mistake was? Does 2.0 print rhythmic notation strictly according to input value (unless it runs across a bar-line), or is it working on an algorithm to produce music typeset according to a specific stylebook?

In reply to by Recorder485

When I said I wasn't sure what to look for, I meant, when opening the original 1.3 version into 2.0. I don't see any changes there. The quarter notes you mention are still quarter notes. It is only when opening the "Prob" version that I see problems. So it isn't just a case of 2.0 changing things on its own. It's clearly something you did after loading the file into 1.3 and before saving it that caused the problem.

MuseScore never changes you rhythms unless it *has* to. Pasting a 12/8 passage onto the wrong beat or the wrong time signature *has* to create ties - there is no other way to make it fit. So the ties were create then. Once those ties were there, they won't be elimianted, because again MuseScore won't change your rhythms unless it *has* to. And there is nothing that can force tied notes to be combined. So instead of trying to fix the problem with the version you pasted - which by now already contains ties - you should simply have delete it it and done the paste over again.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Okay, that answers my question, thanks. I was hoping this was something I'd done wrong, but simultaneously hoping for a magic wand to repair it. Heh.

Actually, if I'd noticed the problem earlier than I did, cutting out and repasting the music would have been it. But when I first assembled that score, I was not paying attention to the music, which had been done for over a year at that point. Instead I was treating it like blocks of graphic matter, too busy learning to run the new formatting features in 2.0 to really look at the notes. It wasn't until I started going through the parts and deciding where to paste in cue measures that I started reading the music itself again and noticed (duh!) all those ties. By then, I'd done too much other work on the movement to lose...so I bit the bullet and corrected it all by hand.

Lesson learned....

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