4/4 time measure will not except 4 beats but only three.
I have composed a composition of 12 pages entitled "My Music Is My Cathedral" (The Little Hill That Became A Mountain) it is for the Pipe Organ. I have the music printed off, but something happend to the original that was on the computer and it disappeared, so I am rewriting it on the computer using Musescore. I have copied up to page 5, but I have run into a problem: all the measures lay out 4 beats except for the next measure which will allow only three beats with 8th notes, there are tiny pluses on the staves, I don't know how they got there and I can't remove them, they might have something to do with the problem. Can you tell me how I can get back to 4 beats per measure, will greatly appreciate it, thank you.
Phillip Booth Faulkner
Comments
Go to the measure properties (right mouse button on a measure) and set the current value to 4/4.
The small plus or minus signs tell you that the measure is longer or shorter than the time signature specifies.They disappear if the correction was successful.
BTW, I would not publish my e-mail address to avoid spam ...
You have inadvertently changed the "Actual Duration" of the measure. That's what the little gray plus and minus signs mean.
Right-click on the measure in question. Do not right-click on a note, rest, or text; right-click on empty space within the measure. Click on Measure properties... (or possibly Bar properties...) at the bottom of the context menu. On the Measure properties (or Bar properties) dialog, change the Actual Duration to "4/4".
For further details, see these two sections of the Handbook:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/pickup-and-non-metered-measures
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/measure-properties
Or you can post a PDF of the score. Either we can try to run it through a reader or you can. Might save some time.