[SOLVED] Tie changing the beaming in a 6/4 bar

I am working on redoing a piece I did SEVERAL years ago in Finale (close to 20 years ago at this point).

In it, I have a 4/4 bar with a pattern:
Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 7.54.30 PM.png
then there is a 6/4 bar with the same pattern, that ends with some other material (I did some forcing of rhythms because it looked very odd):
Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 7.54.39 PM.png
When I add the ties, I get a very weird beaming system that I do not want. In fact I think it makes it harder to read:
Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 7.59.31 PM.png
The problem is, that I cannot “break” the beam with the tie in place, and when I remove the tie and break the beam, the beam returns to what it is in the 2nd graphic. Is there a way to stop this from happening?

Robby

Here is what happened without Force duration:
Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 8.04.39 PM.png
Robby

In Engrave mode, I was able to do the “beam together” option, but not in write mode.

Robby

At the moment there aren’t good global beaming options for 6/4.

IIRC my usual solution is to set the meter as [1+1+1+1+1+1]/4. This tells Dorico to divide the bar into crotchets/quarters (but displays an ordinary 6/4 time signature) and should give you the notation you want without any forced durations or beaming tweaks whatsoever.

I agree with Pianoleo, and I’d expand his comment — I can find no way to get useful automatic beaming in 5/4, 6/4, or 7/4, or greater… because there’s no way to tell Dorico you want to group quarter-notes in a certain way, eighth-notes in another, etc. This is the equivalent of Sibelius’s “Beam and Rest Groups,” and I’m finding its lack to be really annoying. I could be a lot happier even if there was just one more Notation Option preference to group all eighth-notes in pairs for any meter greater than 3/4. As it is now, I’m also setting the meter to [1+1+1+1+1+…]/4 and then manually controlling the larger subdivisions of a bar.

It doesn’t help that manually changing beam groups requires a lot of clicking and dragging, even with keyboard shortcuts set. (And as Robby noticed, if there are ties involved, you have to be in Engrave mode, which is even slower since you can accidentally click on so many more things in Engrave mode.) Dorico is so good about making beaming consistent, it just needs a way to let us say what we want for a given time signature.

Thanks guys! This was driving me up a wall, and I couldn’t figure it out.

@pianoleo - I didn’t even think of that solution. In hindsight, that probably would have been the best (and easiest) route to go.

@high5ths - I’m sure in the fullness of time, this will be handled better. But I do agree… If there could be something to allow us to determine how each time signature is handled, that would be great.

Robby

The other nice thing about using [n+n]/n (where n is an integer) is you can define custom beating patterns for time signatures like 7/8 (where you might want 3+4 or 4+3 or 2+3+2 etc.)

Also, once you’ve set one time signature you can easily copy and paste it to elsewhere in the piece, and the meter pane on the right side of Write mode will retain it under “Used in this flow”.

Thanks for that info!! That might prove to be useful in the future!

Robby