Local time signatures and empty measures?
I'm working in Musescore 3 to try and have a piece with half the instruments in 6/8 and half of the instruments in 2/4 (English Folk Song Suite Mvmt 1 as you could maybe guess), but every time I try to Ctrl+Drag a local time signature to a part, it keeps coming up with an error message saying that I can only do this with an empty bar... but the bar is empty! I know in Musescore 2 you could totally delete rests and everything from the bar, which I attempted, but it appears Musescore 3 doesn't have that feature anymore. Since these bars have no notes and only whole bar rests in them, I'm at a loss as to what this error message could mean! Some help would greatly be appreciated since I need to crack on with this arrangement.
Comments
The problem with local time signatures is that every staff must have empty measures from that point onward or you will get an error.
Above if you've some further troubles please attache the score and describe steps to reproduce.
Btw. if you're talking about: http://petruccilibrary.ca/files/imglnks/caimg/3/3b/IMSLP23820-PMLP54235… Idon't see any 6/8 time signatures (but you wrote about an arrangement not a transcription;-).
In reply to Above if you've some further… by kuwitt
I am talking about that piece indeed! The upper woodwinds go into 6/8 with the introduction of the third tune, page eight of that PDF I believe. I've attatched the file, I managed to put a local time signature of 2/4 into the bottom parts (bar 64), but after some research about the whole empty measure thing and some hacks around it I tried so many combinations of deleting and re-inserting totally pristine empty bars that hadn't even had anything inputted and deteled from them, which by a thread from 2017 that I found should have worked, but the pesky thing still won't let me put the local 6/8 in.
In reply to I am talking about that… by MusicalShards
As I said above, ALL measures in ALL staves (new emphasis now) must be empty from that point forward or you will not be able to enter a local time signature.
Once you empty out the measures you will need to manually reenter all of the notes because local time signatures prevent you from copying or pasting in any staff in a section with a local time signature.
There is a workaround/exception to this. You can ctrl+drag the exact same time signature and change its appearance (right click the time signature and select time signature properties). In the case of the 6/8 you want to use, you will need to use triplets (or possibly sextuplets) for the notes in the 6/8 measures. I would enter them as needed until the score returns to a singe time signature for all instruments. I would then select all of the triplet numbers and brackets and set them to none in the inspector.
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/selection-modes explains several possibilities for selecting only every item of a type within a selected region.
In reply to As I said above, ALL… by mike320
Hi, yeah I tried having all new blank measures in all staves for the rest of the piece, deleting totally everything and inserting new empty bars for the rest of the piece to try and insert and it still didn't work. I realise I could workaround it, but that's a fucking lotta hassle and I was just very frustrated that a function that was supposed to eliminate having to cheat your way into local time signatures wasn't working despite having followed all of the rules I could find for it.
In reply to Hi, yeah I tried having all… by MusicalShards
Sorry. local time signatures are quite buggy. I've shied away from using them until they are fixed so I'm a bit out of practice. My workaround using a 2/4 time signature changing is to say 6/8 and using triplets is the best way to proceed at this point.
One other thing that prevents applying a local time signature is parts. You cannot create parts until after you have the local time signatures inserted. I deleted the notes from the existing measures and deleted parts and was able to insert a local time signature.
One thing to keep in mind, if you use a real local time signature (like insert a 6/8 time signature, you cannot copy and paste in measures with local time signatures. You can copy and paste if you only change the display of the time signature.