In some cases Dorico positions secondary beams on staff lines unconventionally.
See the attached image. The red arrows mark the invalid placement of 16-note beam ends.
I am referring to beaming rules described in “The Art of Music Engraving and Processing” by Ted Ross.
Is it a bug, or does Dorico follow a different convention?
P.S. Big congratulations on the release. The depth and quality of the program is impressive.
So far, I’m only missing system dividers and large time signatures for film scoring.
Thanks for your feedback. Dorico snaps all beam lines to valid sit-straddle-hang positions, as Ross calls them, though it does not follow exactly Ross’s “rules” – if you have studied Ross’s book then you will know that even within his copious tables there are a number of inconsistencies, or possibly mistakes, in those tables.
Basically Dorico ensures that all of the beam lines, not only the primary beam, are at valid sit-straddle-hang positions, but it does not consider sit or hang as invalid positions for the secondary beam (and nor, do I believe, do most engravers or publishers). Can you remind me which passage in Ross specifies that this should be avoided?
Thank you Daniel. I was referring to general rules for slanting beams and the traditional practice of avoiding “white wedges”. (Ross: page 98, Amount of Beam Slanting: Placement of Beams)
In my understanding, this applies to the general principle of drawing good looking beams, before you even consider if this is a primary or a secondary beam. My question would be, why would you not want to apply the same “clean look” rules to the principal and secondary beams in double beamed groups?
To my eyes, a beam (either primary or secondary) hanging from a staff line and slanting down (or sitting and slanting up) just looks off. I don’t recall ever seeing it this way in classical printed editions, but I assume you studied it more extensively than I.
I think these days the reprographic issues that Ross was so concerned about at the time he wrote his book have largely been solved by the continual march of improvement in both offset printing and digital printing: these days you would have to struggle to get the kind of filling in of tiny wedges that he writes about.
That said, if you prefer beams never to move from a sit to a hang or from a hang to a sit, you can certainly achieve this by way of changing the preferred slants in the Beams page of Engraving Options. Publishers like Henle rarely allow a beam angle of more than half a space, and no beam line can ever cross more than one staff line. You should be able to achieve beam slants to precisely your taste using the options provided in Dorico, and if not, let me know what problems remain and we’ll take a look.
