Notation of last measure of a song with a pickup measure
I'm currently notating a song and don't know what's the correct way to write the ending of it.
The song has a pickup measure with a quarter note duration. Because of that, the correct way of finishing it would be to end the song on a measure with only 3 beats.
Sadly the last measure ends like shown in the picture (top example), where I have not enough beats left to compensate the pickup measure.
So my question is, what is the proper way to get around this? Would you just add a complete new measure with only 3 beats like the bottom example in the picture?
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It doesn't matter how you end the piece. Centuries ago there was a convention that you compensated for the pickup measure at the end. But nowadays nobody is going to complain. I see pieces all the time notated with a pickup and a complete bar at the end.
Update: This is not a general rule. If a piece is written in such a way that repeating from the end to the beginning would make musical sense, the last measure should be of proper duration to allow for that. This is the case for a lot of folk or dance music that you can repeat endlessly. But this doesn't apply to the example given here, where a repeat to the beginning would be very awkward.
Probably the acid test is to play it with a repeat - which I appreciate may well not be there. But by doing this, you'll feel that the rhythm of it all will fit better one way or the other. I suspect the second version is what you'll end up with. Looking at the complete work would give more clues, though.
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