Measures, staves and voices

Everything on this page changes the shape of the score rather than its notes. All of it is one undo step per action, and all of it reverts exactly.

Measures

Keys	Action	Applies
⊞+ ⊞− ⊞*	insert / delete / duplicate measure (numpad)	any timefixed

The header’s +m, −m and ⧉m buttons insert, delete and duplicate measures; the numpad keys do the same thing. Without a selection they act on the caret’s measure; with a block they act on the block’s measure range, so a three-measure block duplicates three measures.

New measures arrive with the right staff shape — every staff, and every voice of their neighbour, filled with whole-measure rests.

Measure numbers stay sane. Insert, delete and duplicate renumber the measures sequentially afterwards; a pickup measure keeps its 0-based numbering, and editorial numbering that isn’t a plain number is never touched. Undo restores the original numbers exactly.

Inserts respect context boundaries

Insert or duplicate next to a mid-score meter or key change and the new measures stay in the region they came from — a duplicated 4/4 measure never lands inside the 7/8 section that follows it.

Staves

The staves select in the status bar shows the staff count and offers two operations:

• add staff below appends a treble staff, gives every measure a whole-measure rest on it, and puts the caret on the new staff’s first measure so you can start typing straight away.
• remove caret staff removes the caret’s staff from the whole score — its definition, any mid-score redefinitions, its content in every measure, and the control events anchored to it. The last remaining staff is refused.

Two staves, treble over bass.

Voices

Voices are per staff and per measure. The voices select shows the caret’s voice and offers switch, add and remove.

• add a voice puts a new voice — whole-measure rests — into the caret’s staff from the caret’s measure onward, the same scoping rule clef, key and meter changes use. At measure 1 that means the whole score.
• remove this voice takes it out from the caret’s measure on, together with the control events anchored to it. A staff’s last voice is refused.

Two voices in one staff: Verovio stems voice 1 up and voice 2 down.

A voice added mid-score draws the engraver’s double barline at the boundary where it starts (an existing special barline is left alone).

Note entry works in any voice exactly as it does in voice 1. Where a staff has more than one voice, battuta tints them so you can see which one you are in: voice 1 blue, voice 2 violet, voice 3 amber, voice 4 magenta. The caret and selection colours always win over the tint.

↑ and ↓ traverse voices before staves — see Navigation.

Clef, key and meter

The clef, key and meter selects always show the context in force at the caret, and picking a value applies the change at the caret’s measure.

Select	Scope	Options
clef	the caret’s staff	treble, bass, alto, tenor, octave-down treble
key	score-wide, from the caret’s measure	7♭ through 7♯
meter	score-wide, from the caret’s measure	4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 2/2, 3/2, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, 5/4, 7/8, 5/8, 3/8

A mid-staff clef change, written before the barline where an engraver puts it.

A key and meter change at a measure start.

At measure 1, battuta edits the score’s initial definitions in place. Mid-score it inserts the MEI-native form: an interleaved definition for key and meter, and an inline clef before the barline — the engraver’s position, and the form that survives page view and export. Repeated changes at the same place merge instead of stacking.

Downstream tiles re-render automatically, because a context change moves their cache key. That is also why a new key or meter becomes visible exactly where it changes and not before.

A meter change can be refused

A new meter is validated against every measure up to the next meter change. If one of them no longer fits, battuta refuses and names the first offender — change the meter before entering notes, or on whole-measure rests, where anything fits.

The score title

The title button in the header edits the MEI title (meiHead). If the file has no title chain at all, battuta creates one. Page view prints it; the button relabels itself to the current title, so you can see at a glance what the score calls itself.