Question from the Facebook group - posting in here…
I often use 5/4 time signatures. Every time I’ve read things in 5/4, longer note values (half notes and dotted half notes) reflect the larger meter division: 3+2 or 2+3. Full-bar notes are written as the 3+2/2+3, rather than whole note+quarter note (4+1).
For short note values - 8th notes and shorter - the beam groups are always beat-by-beat.
To check that I’m not just being crazy, I opened the score for the most notable orchestral example of 5/4 I could think of - Holst’s Mars. This is how he did the note grouping: long notes reflect 3+2, 8ths and 16ths break the beams at each quarter note beat.
This is a thing I’ve been asking about for probably 5 years of Dorico use. Am I just missing something? I’ve tried every setting in the Beaming and Note Grouping options and nothing seems to affect things globally.
I’ve gone through and manually broken every beam that I need to - but as soon as anything changes in that bar, all the manual beaming is reset.
Help?
You’re not missing something, unfortunately. This issue has a history going back to the beginning, but more recent threads may be less confusing, since Dorico has acquired so many features since 2016. There is currently no setting that will give us both at once.
Hello!
I guess it’s time for my annual ask on 5/4 beat groupings. 
I’m working on a new project and frustratingly decided I need a bar of 5/4.
What I REALLY would love is to be able to separate all of the 8th notes by beat groupings - I don’t want any more than 2 8th notes beamed together. Except the only way to do this is [1+1+1+1+1]/4 - which is going to foul up any longer note durations.
In my beaming settings, every “break beam at the beat” setting is set to where it should divide all of my beats in 5/4. But I cannot get it to change.
As mentioned in my previous post from a year ago, if I try to change it manually, I’ll have to go back and re-edit it if anything changes.
Beat grouping in 5/4 has been problematic since I started in Dorico 8 years ago… When will this move up the priority list? I don’t want to get whiny - but something like beat grouping is way more concerning to me than creating a virtual stage layout for playback…
Thanks for all you do!
So how do you want your longer notes divided?
How often do eighth-notes appear?
How does it ‘foul up’ longer durations?
Longer notes I want to reflect the macro beat groupings (largely 3+2).
There are many 8th notes. There’s a pretty active rhythmic groove underpinning the material above.
If your meter is written as [1+1+1+1+1], a full-bar note is shown as a whole note + quarter note. As a player (and in all my time teaching), I would expect such a duration to be written as dotted half + half, or the reverse.
The macro pulse in 5/4 is almost always 2+3 or 3+2. Half note durations and longer should reflect that.
But I don’t want the 8th notes to be beamed as anything other than pairs of notes.
Add on to my above post - I just now discovered under Note Grouping (rather than Beam Grouping) that there IS a toggle for 5/4 to be 3/2 vs 1/1/1/1/1 … but that still is the same problem as above.
Really, I’m just wanting the toggles that tell 4/4 time to break beams at every beat to also apply to 5/4.
(You should remove your phone and email from your posts)
I think you should adopt the principle of least work rather than no work. If pairs of quavers is your priority, then forcing a 3+2 or 2+3 for semibreves is the only route.
This is what [1+1+1+1+1]/4 gives you (it defaults to 3+2 for dotted minims). The red notes have forced duration to give you the 3+2 or 2+3 for your semibreves (All else is straight input). Of course you can copy ‘forced’ bars and re-pitch using locked duration.
I too find this quite frustrating. It should be quite simple I would have thought for a program like Dorico. I tend to just leave the 3+2 and accept the longer beaming but I would much rather have the 3+2 (for longer notes and rest divisions) but with beams only covering one beat. Like you have the option with 4/4. Any news on this?