Global stem length

Dorico
1

Client would like all stems to be equal length (this is a rhythmically complext percussion score, and I can see the advantage in this case).

In Engraving Options–Notes–Stems, I set all values to 3.5. But when I do this, you can see it’s adjusting the stem length of the subdivision, so the resulting outer lengths aren’t equal.

I’m aware this isn’t standard practice, but still asking anyways. Short of manual adjustment (no thank you), is there a way to achieve this across the score?

Thanks!
stem length.png

2

Is it not possible to adjust one and copy that adjustment to others, like you can in Finale? If not, that might be a useful addition to Dorico’s copy/paste powers.

3

You can set the relevant property, but there’s no comfortable way to copy properties from one object to the other. I’ve been toying with the idea of building a sort of reservoir using whatever little scripting capabilities we have right now, but I won’t have the time to test it until things slow down for me.

4

What can be copied though is the offset value. In this case, if it is set to -5/8 for both the start and the end of the beam, one can then ctrl-select all starting notes and enter (or paste) the value in engrave mode through the properties panel; and then to the same with ending notes. It still takes time, but is more manageable than doing everything one by one.

5

Thanks Claude. Not what I prefer, but you’re right… certainly better than one-by-one.

Daniel, could this be considered as a future engraving option? Something like “global stem length value for outermost beams.” In some scenarios it could look quite amateurish, but in other cases it would be incredibly helpful. Thank you.

1 Like
6

I wouldn’t be keen on adding such an option, really, since it’s not standard practice in any kind of publication, to my knowledge. As always, I’m very happy to be proved wrong if I am indeed incorrect.

7

I confess I don’t know of any published examples… :blush:

8

I also need this function, which I achieve in Lilypond trivially. It’s used by various New Complexity School composers. Appearance in publications is not the be all and end all - most of our scores are in house engraved PDF’s, but the notation is still valid, and as mentioned in this thread, can be very helpful.

Sorry to always be referencing Lilypond, but I am missing a lot of its capabilities, even though Dorico is so superior in many ways. In Lilypond I write a simple function to say \setBeamPosAll 6 6, to set the start and the end offset position from the staff centreline.

I’d like to see this a a feature request. When faced with having to do this in my current 300 pages string quartet and other works, it will become tedious.