Beams don't condense properly

Hello, again.
Can anybody give me a quick answer as to why beamed notes in my piece won’t condense with a single stem (amalgamate)? Is this normal condensing behavior? I would like the flagged notes and beamed notes to all get condensed with a single stem. I’ve looked in various options and can’t find anything that relates directly to this issue.

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Nope, sorry.

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First check in galley view if all notes are in same voices. But yes. Having the file helps.

@claude_g_lapalme
Sorry. I didn’t post a file because I wasn’t sure if it was a setting of some sort, or an actual problem…

@claude_g_lapalme
I did check in Galley view, using the “v” to toggle voices and it seems there are only single voices used on the staves. I checked on several problematic staves.

Here’s a version of the file that includes most of the wind parts. I included that many parts so you can see how sporadic the problem is. I suspect that sometimes it happens because a voice hasn’t finished yet in one part. But at other times I don’t think there are any voice issues and the problem still arises.

Condensing Example.dorico (1.6 MB)

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Ah! In galley view, select the passage, right click, select Stems>Undo force stems, and then Beaming> reset beaming. Also, your clarinet dynamics were not exactly in the same place. For Dorio to execute automatic shared stem condensing, things have to be EXACTLY the same on both staves.

I also noticed that the opening clefs were force as well. Select and delete them so that they can no longer be selected. This was obviously an xml as the clef thing only happens then.

In the end, when importing an xml, I personally prefer to set my preferences to import next to nothing from the xml in regards to formatting (preserve beaming and so on - that’s in the preferences menu). It’s a bit more work to set things up how you wanted it, but it saves frustrating moments such as this one, and makes the file more “Dorico-like”

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… or you can select all and click on Edit>Reset appearance, after import.

Amazing @claude_g_lapalme! How did you find that that was the culprit?! Thank you.

Despite your great knowledge of the software, I happen by chance to been using a few years more! So I keep trying things that happened to me previously until I find the right one. I’d rather import clean and redo beaming, etc … but that’s me.

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@claude_g_lapalme
Thank you so much, Claude! I had tried resetting appearance on problematic stretches of music (also reset placement) and it didn’t make a difference. It seems that the “Reset Beaming” is what really worked for me here. At least it did on one passage. I’ll go and apply this method to other places in the score now, too.

Thanks for the info about importing XML files. I haven’t used XML export/import before so I didn’t even realize you can import without formatting. I must have overlooked a window or selection when importing. I will keep this in mind if I even feel so bold as to import XML again in the future (!).

I did forget that reset beaming is not invoked when resetting appearance. You have to do both. It’s been a while!

And the import settings for xml have to be preselected in the Edit menu>Preferences>Xml import

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@claude_g_lapalme
… so with regard to the XML import settings, you mean uncheck all settings like “Beam Groups” and “Articulation Placement” etc, etc? I assume the “Note Durations” needs to be checked, right? Or do you even uncheck that one and let Dorico have its way with durations?

That’s what I do. I like to have a sense of what what Dorico is doing first hand. Then I start changing settings according to the results I want, and later manually alter things that are not part of the default settings.

I see. That sounds like a pretty good approach. Thanks!

This thread is an excellent lesson in some of the intricacies of condensing. Thank you all for the discussion.