Thanks Larry and Peter

I am not sure that the problem has anything to do with pickup notes, pushed notes or not using a count-in because it happens anywhere in a song that I start the playback - not just at the beginning e.g if I double click on any bar it may happen or if I set the space bar to "play from current position" it also may happen. .

I tried using a lead in and the problem disappears at the start but this isn't much help because I don't want to use lead-ins and I sometimes want start a song in the middle.

Larry - how can I have a "note entered or recorded before Beat 1"? Except of course if I start the song at say bar 5 then there is a note in bar 4.

Peter - you asked about a specific demo song. It can happen with just about any song that has a least one midi instrument but you could use the demo song with "dixiland.sty" as an example. Remember that the problem is intermittent - about 20% of the time.

Tony