[Solved:] 5/4 meter beaming issue

Dorico
1

I’m having a problem getting the eight-note beaming I want in 5/4 meter. [Dorico 5 Pro on Mac.]

I have gone into the shift-command-N settings and selected [under Beam Groupings] the ‘Break Beams at Beat Boundaries’ option and applied it. Yet all eighth note patterns of more than two in a row are beamed continuously. Six eighth notes in a row? Single beam across all six, no matter where in the measure they are.

The example given for that option, in 3/4 meter, looks exactly like I want my 5/4 to look. No luck. Any group of eighth notes is beamed as one group. I can manually break the beams as I want them, by breaking each pair by hand, but that’s way too time consuming for the hundred or so measures involved. And highlighting the whole passage and going to Edit>Notation>Beaming and selecting ‘Split Beam’ option removes all beaming, resulting in individual flagged eighth notes, which is not what I want. Nor does ‘Reset Beaming’ do anything at all that I can see. (I have selected the entire 5/4 section of the score prior to doing the reset.)

Any ideas? Am I misunderstanding something? Am I doing something incorrectly? Why does the setting not affect 5/4? What can I do, short of doing it all one pair at a time by hand, to fix this?

2

I don’t think these setting apply to “odd” time signatures like 5/4. You are probably better off using the shift-M [1+1+1+1+1]/4 time signature to get each beat to be beamed individually.

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3

I assume you want one of the following?

Screen Shot 2024-09-05 at 3.10.01 PM
Screen Shot 2024-09-05 at 3.10.01 PM1070×433 25.4 KB

–The first is 5/4 with Notation options set to break at beat boundaries
–The second is as Janus suggested
–The third is [2+3]/4
Depending on what you want, this should give it to you with a little tinkering.

4

Thank you rpearl. Your second measure is what I was looking for, and, as you say, Janus’s solution works perfectly.

Thanks to both of you for an easy fix.

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