Yesterday I stumbled across an option to place the beam between notes on widely spaced intervals. That was a very bad idea and now I want to return it to the default, but in a half hour of looking and querying two different clueless LLMs I can’t find it again.
Help? Sorry to bother the experts with such a simple thing.
Hi @Lynn_Newton, try selecting the notes, right click, and choose
Stem> Remove Centered Beam
[EDIT: see my post below to see the Global option for Centered Beams, instead]:
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That didn’t change it, but it put me on the right track for fixing those that look bad. If the centered beam is removed, then it has to go either above or below. (Unless it’s not beamed at all.) So on two that were nearby, I chose Stem > Force Stem Up on one and Stem > Force Stem Down on the other.
I had looked only as far as the Beaming submenu and it didn’t occur to me that Stem might be helpful.
However, this is not the total solution. In my OP I said that I found an option that I could set while prowling around and set it so that the default is to use centered beams on wide intervals, even when they’re right next to each other, which looks bad. What I want is to find my way back to that option and set it back to what it was in the beginning.
One of the things I like very much about Dorico is that in many option and preference settings it doesn’t just provide a verbal description; it supplies a picture so the user can see: Do you want it to look like THIS or do you want it to look like THIS? Saves a lot of head scratching.
I’ll still look for the option, but it’s good that I now know how to change ones I don’t like.
I trust it works the other way around if I restore the option and later find that there is a place I want to have a centered beam while the default is otherwise.
Thanks for helping me to move forward!
Hi @Lynn_Newton,
I think the global option that you are searching is
Engraving Options>Notes>Stems>Centered Beams
You have also some advanced option, there :
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That’s it! My trouble was I never thought to look under stems. Now I know better.
Problem solved. Thanks very much.
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You are welcome @Lynn_Newton.
(Hi @Lillie_Harris, I noticed that under…
…I didn’t find a reference to the global and strictly correlated Engraving Options > Notes > Stems > Centered Beams.
Maybe it would be helpful to add a link in the Related Links box of that Centered Beams page of the Manual.
I also didn’t found in the Manual an explication of the advanced options Minimum stem length before centering beam is allowed & Threshold stem length for swapping beam position. Thank you for any advice in this regard, and for your wonderful tireless work.)
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Thanks @Christian_R – the manual in general doesn’t explain every single Engraving Option, because frankly that would end up being far too extensive to be helpful.
However, it is my custom to add little hints about where you can go to find related global settings for topics, so I will look at doing so here.
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