Changing time signature and converting tuplets to non-tuplets
Hey,
I've done some searching and I think what I want isn't possible, but, just to make sure: I was transcribing a piece to make my own arrangement, and I started off in 4/4. Along the way, I realized I was having to do way too many tuplets, and that the piece should have been in 12/8. I'd like to convert what I have to 12/8, and have it treat, say, a current triplet as three 8th notes instead. Unfortunately, that's not what happens if I simply change the time signature. It simply keeps all the tuplets as being against 2 8th notes, and rearranges things such that I end up with, say, 18 notes in a measure instead of 12. Is there a way to convert a time signature in the way I'm wanting to do?
My previous experience was using Denemo, and I think it handles tuples differently, as "fractions of a measure" rather than "subdivisions of a quarter/half/whole note". Neither is right or wrong, per se, just hoping there's some way in Musescore to get it to do things the other way for this specific operation.
Thanks for any help!
Comments
By default, no, there is no way to do this. You could take a look at https://musescore.org/en/project/duration-editor though and see if that could help with the conversion from tuplets to non-tuplets; I know it can do the reverse.
In reply to By default, no, there is no… by dragonwithafez
That was very helpful, thank you. It was tricky, and I'll also provide this feedback to the developers since I know it's beta version, but, for anyone else's benefit:
There were a couple of tricks to using the tuplet conversion in the Duration editor plugin. First, if I had a measure of 4/4 with 4 triplets, if I started converting at the front of the measure, I would end up with rests inserted in the middle of the sets of triplets. However, if I started with the last triplet, and worked backwards to the front of the measure, I could convert all 4 and the end result would be 12 8th notes as expected with no rests.
Second trick: for some reason, some of the conversions (especially changing quarter notes to a dotted quarter using the plugin) would turn the first 8th note of the following measure to a rest, where there had been a note before. In order to get around this issue, before doing my conversion, I went and inserted an empty measure before every measure of the piece (and two at the end for some reason was necessary), so when it messed up the subsequent measure, it was messing up a measure with nothing in it. Then, once I'd finished, I went and deleted all the "buffer" measures I'd previously inserted before changing the time signature to 12/8.
Finally, just be aware you have to convert every measure in the piece (or section) before you change the time signature, make sure not to forget to dot any rests, whole notes, half-notes, etc using the plugin (so that it won't steal time from subsequent notes).