Amateur hobbyist here. Bar 37 (at the 4 chord) in the image has a timing I am repeatedly notating in place of 4 eighth notes (or 4 quarter notes in 4/4), to let the singer know to be ahead of the beats after the first. I feel like this is a common timing in pop music and wondered if there is a known shorthand for this effect, or a more elegant notation for it.
In the comments, you mention that you were flexible about those dotted barlines. I’m not really sure what they are for, and I’m finding them a little distracting; they make the actual barlines stand out less. More importantly, if you got rid of them you could join up the tied semiquavers in measure 37 (for the lyric “-cised”) to become another quaver in the beam group.
Gould* says that you can break the “rule” about always showing the beats in the bar when you have a reasonably simple figure with a syncopated accentuation. Even the half-bar doesn’t have to be shown in 2/4, as seen the the first example (below). This is actually the same figure as in your measure (a semiquaver beamed with three quavers and another semiquaver) .
I’d leave the other measures, such as mm. 31 and 32, beamed as the are though, because their figures are more complicated.
* Elaine Gould’s Behind Bars — The definitive guide to music notation (2011), p. 170:
Syncopation
Note-values written across the metre, contradicting normal bar division, express accents superimposed on the basic metre. Note-grouping that contradicts the metre will be read as syncopation. […]
When accentuation is intended to contradict the basic metre, write note-values across the beats:
Divide up long bars of short note-values so that the reader does not lose count of the basic metre:
[…]
Rhythms that should not be syncopated must divide note-values to expose the beats of the bar: […]
This seems to be the 'proper' way of writing 'pushed' notes, although more and more, there is no need to signify where the middle of a bar in 4/4 (or 2/4) actually is, by doing what you show - the tied notes. If that works for you and your band, then fine, but substituting quavers for the tied semis would also work fine, especially when everyone got used to that way of writing/reading.
Looking at a lot of dots that have been 'simplified', it's apparent that the pushes have been put in by the singers, even though they're not actually written on the sheets.
