Hi all, I’m looking for a way to change the beat grouping of 3/2 to two dotted half notes instead of three half notes (it’s for Chopin’s Prelude no. 13). I can replicate the grouping by forcing durations and manually rebeaming notes, but that’s not ideal.
Do you mean this? (see attachments) (although perhaps not, because I am not sure what you mean by re-beaming because there are no beams) 
Write>Notation options>Note grouping…
I’m talking about beaming for notes that would have beams. For example, writing 12 8th notes in a bar of 3/2 results in 3 groups of 4 beamed together (indicating that the default beat grouping is 3 half notes), instead of 2 groups of six beamed together (which would indicate that the beat grouping was 2 dotted half notes).
If you only need some of the bars to be beamed this way, then you could insert a 6/4 time signature and hide it using the ‘Hide time signature’ property. Likewise you can restore “normal” beaming for 3/2 when necessary by inserting a 3/2 time signature and then hiding that, too.
If the whole score is written in 3/2 but with the beaming of 6/4, then unfortunately you’re a bit more limited: you could insert a 6/4 time signature and hide it in bar 2, but you’ll need a 3/2 time signature in bar 1, and you would need to specify the beaming and note durations manually for the first bar.
One day I hope you will be able to substitute any reasonable beat grouping in the meter popover: the trouble is that you need a beat grouping of [1.5+1.5]/2, and you can’t currently enter decimals for the numbers that specify the beat length.
I need the whole schmeer beamed that way—it’s Chopin’s Prelude no. 13 in F# Major, and he writes it like that. I’ll go with the hidden meter change in bar two method! That seems like minimal effort.
Thanks!
If I may, there are problems with the time signature in this prelude. There are sources where the time signature notated is 6/8
other sources have 3/2. Critical editions usually correct it to 6/4. Why not accept the obvious: 3/2 is an error here. Even the greatest composers are human and occasionally make mistakes.
Interesting. I wonder why they wrote 6/8 in the version you sent when it was obviously 6/4?
Good point though. I’ll use 6/4.
Several editions use 6/4, but I think the original has 3/2… But a time signature always conveys a bit more information than just the number of beats… it also gives a hint about how the piece should be performed…
Which is?
The first edition (also on IMSLP) has 3/2. Klindworth’s “correction” to 6/8 is a nice example of why editors shouldn’t mess with things that don’t really matter, IMO!
I’m not a great fan of editions that reduce everything to 21st-century-standard spoon-feeding. 3/2 certainly looks like a simple mistake here, but nobody can ask the composer, and anybody who can play the Preludes shouldn’t be bothered by it - so why suppress the evidence of what Chopin actually wrote for no good reason?
I don’t understand the 6/8 thing. The version posted above that has 6/8 written is patently NOT in 6/8, as it has 12 8ths per bar. They must have meant 6/4 and not proofread.
… speed of the pulse, beat emphasis, which in turn will influence choice of tempo etc…
Right! But Chopin writing it in 3/2 would indicate that the emphasized beats were half notes, which is obviously not what he meantt.
I don’t know what he meant, but I guess performers in those days would interpret it as “flowing on dotted half notes”. Today, a composer would probably write it in 6/4 and add a dotted half note in parentheses to convey the same information. I guess less were more in the good ol’ days 
I’m just assuming which grouping wanted by how he beamed the 8th notes in the original (and the melodic content)