Baroque irregular dot: how to input it in MS
This is more a question of curiosity than anything I actually need right now.
Occasionally in Baroque-era scores you'll find groupings of a dotted quaver followed by 3 demisemiquavers instead of the expected two. What this is meant to mean is that the dotted quaver only lasts for 1¼ quavers (5 demisemis) instead of 1½.
One example is the Gigue from Bach's French Suite No. 1 which uses this rhythm extensively; here's bar 4 where you can see from the alignment with the semiquaver in the bass what the intended rhythm is:
So if I wanted to transcribe this in MuseScore authentically (rather than just changing it to a quaver tied to the first of four demisemiquavers), how would I go about it? I can create something that looks right by making the demisemiquavers an unmarked triplet, but of course this would have the wrong rhythm in playback — and more importantly it would align wrongly if it was placed against a semiquaver as in the above example.
Any thoughts?
Comments
I guess make it a regular quaver, followed by the appropriate rest, hide the rest, then add a dot from the Symbols palette. If the rest bothers you in playback, maybe use the Pianoroll editor to make the note longer. Or use a tied note instead of a rest, but then you need to hide the tie too. Either way you'd need to fiddle with the spacing too I guess.
Another approach might be to use multiple voices and adjust the beams to line up. Seems like more work and more likely to not look right if there are future layout changes, though.
Regular quaver, then a demi-semi rest, all beamed to the demi-semi notes
Hide the rest
Add the dot
Place a Tenuto on the quaver (and then hide the Tenuto)
Make a double dotted quaver and make one of the dots invisible.
Make triplet and hide its number (3).
My opinion, this piece has some other errors.
mike 320 - timing is off as you have started the second beat with an ordinary (not dotted) quaver.
ZMD - I am afraid that the OP already stated that a triplet was unsatisfactory (it doesn't fit the timing or the appearance).
OP - since this is non-standard notation (just because some lazy baroque engravers did it doesn't make it standard) you are darn lucky that it can be done at all and the fact that you can approach accurate playback should be accepted as a blessing.