Rests in pickup measure
I know this forum isn't for general musical notation questions, but my question involves both Musescore software and notation conventions in a way that's connected, so I hope it will be appropriate.
The Handbook says: "When an entire measure is devoid of notes, a full-measure (full-bar) rest is used. To create a one-bar rest, select a measure and press Del. All notes and rests on this measure are then replaced by a one-bar rest."
But apparently, this doesn't work when the entire measure devoid of notes is an irregular pickup measure. I have a score of several staffs with various pick-up measures (1/4 for 4/4) at the beginning and elsewhere. Somehow, without meaning to, I have made some of these empty pick up measures hold a quarter rest, and some a whole rest. No matter what I do, I can't seem to change an irregular measure's quarter rest to a whole rest -- the instructions given above don't work -- or an irregular measure's whole rest to a quarter rest.
The attached file shows two measures copied from the score in question. The first is a 1/4 measure, the second a regular 4/4 measure. Selecting the first measure and hitting delete does nothing. And while I haven't posted an example, I find that in the irregular measures that do have a whole rest in them, I can't change it to a quarter rest by pressing five: nothing happens to the whole rest.
The related notation question is which way it is supposed to be. I assume Musescore knows what the convention is for a rest in an empty irregular measure, but it's not clear to me from the way Musescore is acting which it is supposed to be. I've consulted two very standard reference works on notation, but they aren't clear on this: they state very clearly that the current convention is that an empty measure in any time signature should have a whole rest, but they don't say clearly if this rule also applies to an empty irregular measure.
So ... what rest is Musescore programmed to consistently put into an empty irregular pickup measure, and why can't I make it consistent?
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| resttest.mscz | 1.44 KB |
Comments
Pickup measure shouldn't have a full measure rest. There is a bug in MuseScore 1.2 on the score creation.
Check #6055: Full measure rests should not be used for incomplete measures
In reply to Pickup measure shouldn't have by [DELETED] 5
Thanks for the response. I've read that page and understand the problem, but I couldn't see a clear workaround given for current Musescore (did I miss it?) The one I've found by experiment is, if an irregular (1/4) measure has a full measure rest, click on the rest, hit 4 to change it to two eighth rests, then click 5 to change the first eighth rest (it will be selected) to a quarter rest. Is this a bad way to do it for any reason?
(By the way, someone ought to tell the authors of those musical notation reference books to explain this!)
In reply to Thanks for the response. by jcorelis
Are you saying it doesn't work to simply enter a quarter rest? That's how I usually do it. Click the measure, N for note entry, 5 for quarter, 0 for rest (well, I have rest customized to semicolon, but same difference). Also should work to select the measure and hit Delete. That's easier than what I actually do, but somehow I don't totally trust that as much as manually entered rests.
In reply to Are you saying it doesn't by Marc Sabatella
Thanks, yes both those work. What confused me was that in this type of measure if I hit 5, nothing happened, since I didn't hit 0, whereas in regular measures if I selected say a half rest and hit 5, it immediately turns to quarter rests without hitting 0.
In reply to Thanks, yes both those work. by jcorelis
I've also now found that once you change the whole measure rest in a 1/4 measure to a quarter rest by any of the above methods, you can successfully copy/paste that measure with its quarter rest to another 1/4 measure with a whole measure rest in it, and the 1/4 rest will overlay the whole measure rest.