In the blue region, the original state was with the ‘g’ eighth note on the 3rd beat (tied to the previous quarter note) not beamed together with the 16ths. I selected the ‘g’ and the ‘f sharp’ 16th note, chose Edit → Notations → Beaming → Beam Together, and the result is what you see.
Now I’m trying to do the same in the red region and the same sequence of steps has no visible consequence. That is, I select the ‘d’ eighth note (tied to the previous quarter note) and the ‘b’, chose Edit → Notations → Beaming → Beam Together and no change is made.
In fact, I would like the four eighth notes in the red region to be beamed together, but even if I select all four, the above command does nothing.
What is the reason for this difference in behaviour and how can I achieve the desired effect? Thanks in advance!
The beaming controls don’t apply to quarter notes and larger because they don’t have beams. Beam Together works on a selected span of eighth notes or smaller (you need only select the first and last). So with only one note selected, it effectively breaks the beam on either side of the note.
To get:
the ‘g’ eighth note on the 3rd beat (tied to the previous quarter note) not beamed together with the 16ths
select the F 16th and choose Break Beam. It breaks before the selected note.
I would like the four eighth notes in the red region to be beamed together
Since that’s the default, you can just select bar 67 and choose Reset Beaming
The logic of these beaming controls may be different from how we think of beams and note groups, but they do exactly what they say they will do.
(P.S. That is definitely a magenta or fuchsia, not blue.)
Did this project start as a MusicXML import by any chance, and does selecting that whole bar (67) and resetting beaming produce the result you want automatically?
@Lillie_Harris YES. Thanks, I will reset beaming for XML imports in the future.
@Mark_Johnson I’m sorry, I realise I must have not been clear in the original post. The issue was that applying ‘Beam Together’ to
resulted in
(which is what I wanted), but applying ‘Beam Together’ to this:
resulted in no visible change:
So no, in this case the Dorico command did not do ‘exactly what its said it would do’; the two notes can be perfectly well beamed together, which is achieved e.g. by resetting the beaming (thank you for telling me about this option), but the ‘Beam Together’ option just wasn’t doing its job. Now that I know the reason might be XML importing, I will always check this in the future. Thanks for taking your time to reply!
You can change your preferences for what settings Dorico will preserve from XML imports in Preferences > MusicXML Import – you might find deactivating the beaming preference will make XML imports smoother in future.
