How to create a quadruplet that takes the space of five semiquavers / quavers

• Dec 31, 2016 - 17:20

Hi all, I've been having difficulty with getting a 4 : 5 tuplet. It appears that Musescore's tuplets get the total duration of the tuplet as the duration of the current note that is being selected. However, there is no single note rhythm (dotted or not) that can represent the duration of five beats (be it crochets or semiquavers).

I understand that if there is an empty 5/4 bar, I can just select the bar rest and do a ctrl + 4 to achieve a 4-against-5-crochets rhythm. However, I'm working in the context of 20/16 time, and I need four beats over 5 sixteenth notes, which I don't know how to get. Is there something I'm missing here, or does Musescore not support these kinds of tuplets within this context?

Comments

• Dec 31, 2016 - 18:35

If I undertand correctly, what you are asking for is extremely odd. Tuplets normally (always?) span the length of a single note. A single note can be such things as 1/4 notes, dotted 1/2 notes, even dotted 32nd notes if you want. To further explain the tuplet, a 1/4 note equals 2 8th notes, so a triplet would be shown as 3 8th notes in the space of 2. It also equals 4 16th notes, so a 6th-let would be shown as 6 16th notes in the space of 4. There is no way to express 5 of a note duration with a single symbol (with the exception you already stated), so there is no note for such a tuplet to replace.

Now for a possible work around. It is quite complex, but I have a small file with instructions attached. I highly recommend that you use the relation rather than number to identify the tuplet because this strange tuplet will be very confusing to a musician.

Attachment Size
tuplet test.mscz 9.54 KB

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• Jan 1, 2017 - 04:01

Thanks for the reply, managed to get a 4:5 tuplet. I understand it can be confusing for a musician, but the 20/16 section I'm writing is intrinsically grouped as one 'beat' = 5 semiquavers, so it wouldn't be too bad I guess haha.

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• Dec 3, 2022 - 06:01

I know this was from a while ago, but a work-around occurred to me from your very question. I had exactly the same problem (13/8 grouped in 4+4+5, and I wanted a quadruplet on the last section of 5). I created a 5/8 bar in an empty part of the score, made the quadruplet by selecting the whole measure, copied it into the spot I wanted, and deleted the 5/8 bar.

Such rhythms are actually not so uncommon, especially if you look at the work of Boulez or even Strauss.

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