Re: Pickup measure

[Aaron Hill]

On 2023-10-27 6:13 pm, Will Turner wrote:
> I imported a Musicxml file of a hymn. The first measure is a pickup
> measure but it imports as a full measure 3/4 with only a quarter note
> in it. You can see that the measure appears to contain room for 3
> beats instead of one. When I play this in Musescore, it plays as a
> pickup measure, and the measure doesn't have all that space in it.
>
> Using \partial 4 on the first measure, I'm trying to make the existing
> first measure look like a pickup measure and, if possible, actually be
> a pickup measure. The result I get looks like this. It redistributes
> the other measures and the end of every line is now a pickup measure.
> How do I make only the first measure a pickup measure?

Without the .ly file itself, it is hard to say.

But I suspect the quarter notes from the first measure are being 
converted to something like 4*3, essentially making a quarter take up 
the whole time of the measure, which sort of looks like a pickup note.  
(This would likely be a problem with the source XML or the converter.)

When you add the \partial 4, the first quarter duration of the 4*3 is in 
the anacrusis and then its other two quarters of time push the dotted 
quarter to beat three, which leads to all the other alignment errors.


-- Aaron Hill