Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge a Finale split measure question

Hello Everyone,

After much time it has been impossible to resolve a split measure issue (image below). In measure 45, beats three, four and five have as many notes and rests on the middle staves as with beat two.

To merely enter the notes seems to need a preliminary split into four sections (beats one and two in the first one, beats three, four and five in each of the others) - but after the first split the rests for beats three through five "disappear" and further splitting becomes impossible.

Solutions involving a measure in 2/4 (but somehow marked 5/4) and then a 1/4 measure for each of the remaining beats while hiding barlines, et c., don't work because of the whole notes in the top and bottom staves. I am just trying to get the notes and horizontal splits in with this measure as the first step and assume that later as normal one can tie the whole notes in the top and bottom staff to the quarter notes in the same two staves, add markings about playing notes or groups of notes an octave higher or lower (8-----), et c.



Anyone here familiar with a procedure to make this work or should I just let it go and forget about entering this composition into Finale?

This one measure before the coda seems to be the sticking point for entering the composition - I would hate to give up just on account of one measure.

Thanks in advance for any tips to solve this!


M.

Michael,

Check your email!

Hi Nikolas,

Thanks and check your email!

M.

I'm curious what the solution is so why keep it private?

lol...

It's not kept private or anything. It's no secret.

But I'm away to Baku (Azerbaijan), and without my computer, so posting, etc, is rather difficult right now. Since he emailed me, I replied to his email... that's all.

What I told him basically is to separate this 5/4 bar to 3 bars of 2/4, 1/4 and 2/4 and put them in different systems. Hide the time signatures and show a different one, etc...

But I also questioned the sanity of using 128ths in any work... brrr...

Ah, I see. I did doubt whether the chord would continue to be heard with all the fast octaves happening, almost certainly not. That being the case there's no need to show them as a sustained sound. I suppose you could use a sostenuto pedal to accomplish exactly that and have all the fast notes get damped and then your original chord would magically appear from the wash of sound. Interesting concept, but not one that needs to be accomplished in 1 bar.

Nikolas' solution has worked perfectly.

The tempo is only quarter note = 46.5 so I think the 128ths are okay, especially in the context where the piece rapidly builds to a peak. I'm not sure what per cent of pianists can actually manage it but being a show piece it is okay if not everyone can pull it off fully in all aspects (128ths + superfortissimo hammering of each and every one of those alternating octaves!).

The Finale score is being fine tuned but here is the (uncorrected) handwritten copy:

http://michaelsayers.com/compositionpdfs/0024_FANTASY_MARCH.pdf

(high res so it will need to be downloaded)

What worries me more about the composition is the title as there seems to be melodic connection to the music of Schubert, almost as though it is a Fantasy March on Schubert's X (X=the Schubert composition name). I don't recognize the exact Schubert composition or composition(s) involved and therefore can not refer to this in the title.

It would be concerning if it were to be thought that I would borrow music without giving acknowledgment.

p.s. - For Steve, I think you should write a virtuoso composition that explores the concept you mention!


M.