Beaming and subbeaming in 12/16

Dorico
1

Is there a way to specify the desired sub-beam-grouping?

I am writing in 12/16, and the default is perfect, apart from the fact that the first two groups should be beamed by a primary beam. I can achieve that by using [6+6]/16, but that does not give the break in the secondary beam, and it totally messes up the pauses.

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I know that Gould recommends the default solution, but in fast tempi (like for instance Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin), my solution is to be preferred.

If there are no engraving rule options that achieve my desires, are there any fast ways of manually change the beaming? I did select the whole group of 6 notes, then beamed them together, then selected the 4th note, and then broke the secondary beam. It will be quite tedious to do this over the entire piece. Are there faster ways?

If not, I can see two ways of adding support for even more fine-grained tuneability of the metres:

  1. Allow a nested syntax in the metre-dialogue, something like [[3+3]+[3+3]]/16. This could possibly support arbitrary nesting.
  2. In most cases, there are a limited number of distinct rhythms that occur throughout a piece. If a user manually designs one bar of music, there could be an option to employ the same design of beams, ties and forces durations to every bar with the same rhythmical content. Maybe it could even be possible to do this for individual beats or half-bars?
2

Yes, you can do this. Just copy/paste your chosen unit, then use Lock Duration (L) to re-pitch the notes.

(It’s often quicker to select your your unit and use alt-click to paste it somewhere else)

3

Yes, I know (and love) the Lock Duration-feature, but that only works as you are typing in the music. I my case, I have already typed in the music, and are in the process of formatting it. When I copy correctly formatted music to a bar with existing music with the same rhythmic content (but different pitches), the pitches are lost. Unless there are some option to only copy the rhythmic content without the pitches?

Still, it will be a pain to track down every bar with this rhythmic content. And as I understand it, Lua is also not powerful enough yet to script it.

4

I don’t know a way to do this.

It would be very useful if the capabilities of Paste Special were extended to include beaming (and playing techniques) in addition to articulations and slurs.

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