I’m recreating a 120-page manuscript with syllabic beaming, so I’ve entered into one of Dante’s infamous layers. Not sure which one yet…
A little thing, but a huge help: could “Beam Together” behave like slurs? That is, if only one note is selected, “Beam Together” would beam to the next note.
Presently this action results in a partial beam. I don’t know what that is or does, so perhaps it’s important, but IMO this would be much more common. I’ve set “Beam Together” to an easily-accessible keystroke, but it’s still slow to select multiples.
PS: as a bonus, pressing the keystroke for “Beam Together” again would extend the beaming. So to beam three 8ths together, select the first and press the keystroke twice.
Dear Dan, I’ve been using Dorico for six years, making almost exclusively syllabic beaming. I don’t understand your workflow : why should you need to beam together from a note, when the logical process is to unbeam when needed? Let Dorico beam everything as it does, then use unbeam or break beam (alt-b and cmd-alt-b are my shortcuts). You really don’t need anything else. Well, you could use Reset beaming (my shortcut is cmd-alt-ctrl-B) to start the whole process by the right end now
There are very few melismas in this manuscript (German Apostolic hymnbook), as the music is not very florid, so it made more sense to unbeam everything, and only beam when needed.
But I’m not experienced at syllabic beaming, so maybe your way is still better.
Finale (as you know) works similarly and I really like this functionality. In Speedy, Slash either breaks or joins a beam, sort of like a Toggle Beam State command could in Dorico. You don’t have to waste time selecting multiple notes, just position the caret, hit /, and the note can either be beamed to the next group, or made unbeamed if currently beamed. Fast and easy.
