Time Signature For Irregular Bars

Version 01.85.01
Added 13 Apr 2008 (last updated 08 Jan 2026)

For use with Sibelius 6, Sibelius 7.1, Sibelius 7.5, Sibelius 8.x, Sibelius 18.x, Sibelius 19.x, Sibelius 20.x, Sibelius 21.x, Sibelius 22.x, Sibelius 23.x, Sibelius 24.x, Sibelius 25.x, Sibelius 26.x and Sibelius 26.x

Adds a time signature appropriate to the length to an irregular bar, so that irregular bars are made regular. It can also trace the locations of irregular bars.

It also puts an appropriate time signature into the following *regular* bars where this is required. Its goal is to end up with a score where every bar has a size that matches an explicit time signature.

It will not always spell the time signature correctly (it only looks at the length of a bar, not the notes it contains). The lowest denominator is 4, so it will not generate 3/2 or 2/2, but other than that, it picks the simplest fraction, so it will always choose 3/4 over 6/8 and 6/4 over 12/8.

If there is no initial time signature, it will add one.

Updated 20 March 2011 to add an option to choose 6/8 rather than 3/4 and 12/8 over 6/4.

Updated 6 February 2012 to add option to use cautionary accidentals - on by default.

Updated 16 November 2022. Version 01.85.00. General cleanup and improvement of code. Added ability to removed added time signatures when they are no longer needed. This plugin will now run only in Sibelius 6.2 or later.

Updated 8 January 2026. Version 01.85.01. Fixed crashing bug when using the Trace Only option.

• Download TimeSigForIrregularBars.zip (17K, downloaded 100 times)

Plug-in written by Bob Zawalich.