Are you checking Rebar Music, when you make the change?

… I have a 9/4 measure with 9 groups of eight triplets, and just want to rebar to 3/4 ... well Finale does not seem to be able to do it.The re-barred triplets have sixteenths, groups of 33rd (!) …

Davide Verotta,

Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce your problem.

For me, Finale rebars the triplets correctly when I change the time signature from 9/4 to 3/4.

I suspect user error - you know: PEBKAC

I suggest that you - as a test, not a solution - make sure that the 9/4 measure is empty (= no hidden entries!).

Then, try entering the nine triplets again.

And then change the time from 9/4 to 3/4.

Does the same problem happen again?

By The Way:

I have heard of sixteenths before, but your post is the first time I have heard of 33rd notes.

;-)

Bit of an attitude there, Peter, isn't there? There is no "user error". There is just a buggy program that cannot complete a more than basic operation. Here are the two screen shots of the situation, with the starting point at the bottom. Yes, the lovely 33rd are probably just  overlapping triplets ... maybe triplets of 16th? Who knows, finale is  inserting a sixteenth where there should be none and then cascading into a mess of wrong re-barring. (and, PS, I am an VERY experienced user of Finale).

For what it is worth:

I reproduced your example, and the time change from 3/4 to 9/4 rebarred correctly for me.

If you are sure there is no user error, then I suspect some sort of file corruption.

As a test (not a solution) you could try exporting as MusicXML, then import that MusicXML into a new, fresh document.

Could not hurt to try it.

Peter, what "user error" do you think is possible in that example? Just tell me, and I will correct it. Really, what can be wrong going from 9/4 to 3/4 with option re-bar? And ..."file corruption"? Really? Is that your way to say that Finale is messing up for "reason unknown", blaming the user's end again?

I am sure that we all re-bar measures all the times, and am sure that often it does not work. Long time ago I learned not to re-bar too many measures at one time, not to mention re-barring measures with layers, where one better triple check the results because the craziest things can happen. Counters fail, who knows why, like in the example above, and then the re-bar fails. But this example is just beyond the pale, it is one bar into three, and clearly there is no solution. One has to re-enter the notes by hand, which is just ridiculous.

… Peter, what "user error" do you think is possible in that example? Just tell me, and I will correct it …

I suspect that some of the tuplets are incorrectly defined.

You could try this as a test:

Make a backup copy of the Finale document.

Open the backup copy, and set Finale to {Fill With Rests at End of Measure}.

Then, go to the 9/4 measure, and delete the triplet notes on the last beat.

When Finale fills with rests, you should get a quarter rest at the end of the measure.

If that goes well, delete the triplet notes on the beat before the rest - and make sure that Finale fills the measure correctly.

Keep doing this, going backwards one beat at a time.

From your screen shots I suspect that the very first triplet is correct.

… And ..."file corruption"? Really? …

This is just a sad fact:

File corruption happens.

It has nothing to do with user error.

But you do make backup copies - so that you can go back to an earlier version of the document, in case something goes wrong - right?

I make user errors all the time, but my results on a test case are pretty much what Peter relates.

Must be nice to live in a world where you never make mistakes, and all programs are perfect.

In the original book M*A*S*H, Frank Burns was described as a doctor, who, if a patient died, said it was either "God's will, or somebody else's fault."

I am not sure what is the problem here, but you are not helping, just  being condescending, and questioning people expertise gratuitously.  The problem is not user error, or file corruption, whatever that means. Of course if you create a different file, and input a 9/4 measure and re-bar Finale works. The problem is context dependent, and if you do not know what that means, from a programming point of view, just avoid useless and annoying replies. And try yourself: it takes just two minutes to come up with an example of a re-bar failure. As done below, 4/4 to 5/4 messes up the 2nd layer. The culprit? The seemingly inoffensive tied middle C in measure 3-4. If one takes that out the rebar would work correctly.

Davide Verotta,

I was able to reproduce the problem in your last example.

It looks like you have found a bug.

You should send this example to the folks in Tech Support.

However, I would not say that the time signature change from 4/4 to 5/4 “messes up” the 2nd layer.

The only “mess up” comes in the last measure, in the bottom staff, in Layer 2, where Finale adds a quarter.

Everything else is transformed correctly to 5/4.

You said that the Rebar is correct if you take out the middle C in measure 3.

Unfortunately I was not able to reproduce this.

I took out the middle C in measure 3, but the Rebar still added a quarter in the last measure, in the bottom staff.

The only way I could get Rebar done correctly, was to take out all Layer 2 notes in the last measure, in the bottom staff.

The problem with examples like this is that the error propagates. I am pretty sure that if I added 5 more bars to the example the mistake will still happen where it does (bar 4 in the re-barred 5/4), but then it will mess up all the next bars. I re-bar quite a lot, because I use a lot of non-standard rhythms in my compositions (or maybe because I change my mind often!), and I gave up long ago to (1) re-bar long sections of music (I do it in little steps, otherwise a mistake is sure to happen) and (2) try to rebar anything with more than 1 layer. What prompted me to post is that the mistake in re-barring 9/4 to 3/4 is beyond the acceptable, and I was hoping there was some magic fix for it. Looks like there is none.

Congratulations. You found a bug. Put a gold star on your forehead, and go back to work.

Nobody but you had a problem with 9/4 to 3/4. Changing 4/4 to 5/4 is obviously more complicated, especially with layers, triplets, and a nonuplet (?) Anyway, you obviously know more that ant of us, so I’ll shut up, now.

Mike Rosen, great that you decided to shut up! I really appreciate that you stop posting replies that either suggest the trivial or imply people don;t know what they are doing.  To tell you the truth it would have been nice if you could have avoided to post yet another semi-insulting message, but hopefully it was the last one.