Ghost rests

• Jul 26, 2024 - 04:39

I converted a pdf file into musescore format. Measures 5 & 6 should have four beats, but the conversion inserted several ghosted rests that throw things off. They don't respond to highlighting, cut/copy, etc.

Can anyone suggest a way to delete them?
Thanks.

Screenshot (1).png


Comments

Select the rest and press Ctrl+Del. Unfortunately, measures 5 and 6 have some notes in the bass clef on beat 1 that you need to copy to the second beat.
But what about measures 3 and 7? They are also too long!

In reply to by HildeK

Thanks for the tip.

This was a setting of a poem by Thomas Ken, one that has been adapted by many hymn writers over the years (the text didn't carry over from the pdf, so my next task is to add it back in.)

It is common practice in hymn notation not to include a time signature, particularly where it changes frequently from one measure to the next to accommodate the meter of the text. This is done just to simplify the appearance on the page, making it easier for those whose music reading skills are marginal at best to follow along. Choir members don't really need the time signature.

A good example is #242 in the 1982 Episcopal hymnal, which alternates between 6/4 and 5/4. Another example is #201 in the 1940 Episcopal hymnal, where the time signature runs 3/4-4/4-6/4-3/4-6/4-4/4.

In reply to by AriseMyLove

"I converted a pdf file into musescore format. [...] Choir members don't really need the time signature."

Sorry, but optical music recognition (OMR) absolutely relies on an explicit change of time signature.

Most good OMR systems allow you to insert any missing time signature changes before you generate the MusicXML export. The OMR provided by MuseScore's File > Import PDF is a simplified version of the standalone Audiveris OMR tool. You can download Audiveris to your own computer and experiment with its various parameters and options.
https://github.com/Audiveris/audiveris/wiki/Installation

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