Linked tablature staff doesn't show Treble clef's beaming pattern / And its beam pattern cannot be set with steps that worked for the treble clef.

• Jan 5, 2022 - 18:12
Reported version
3.6
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore

I created the attached score with the following steps; in short, setting the tablature staff's beaming pattern has no visible effect:

Linked tablature - Beam pattern bug.mscz

• New Score
• Open Guitar + Tab template
• add 8 eighth notes
• set Stems and Beam ON (in Instrument>;Advanced>Note Values)
• show the time signature on the tablature staff (in Staff Properties)
• select the treble clef's Time Signature and choose Properties in the Inspector
• In the Note Groups tab, set the 1/8 beaming pattern to 3-3-2

Result:

a) the treble staff gets the desired 3-3-2 beaming pattern
however the linked tablature staff does not beam notes in the 3-3-2 pattern.

b) manually setting the tablature's beaming pattern has no effect'
on the display of beam groups.

c) WORKAROUND: I can clone (Ctrl/Cmd Shift drag) the treble clef's meter to
the tablature staff.

scorster

Comments

• Jan 6, 2022 - 04:30

Here's another score where I encounter a similar problem when attempting to apply a 3-3-2 beaming pattern via Time Signature property

In this case (see the attached score) I'd expect the initial Time Signature (and its 3-3-2 beaming property) to affect the remainder of the score ... until the next meter change, of which there are none.

When I noticed the property failing to affect subsequent measures thought perhaps I'd set some beaming manually, and that was taking precedence over the meter setting, so I tried Ctrl/Cmd r to reset beams. No improvement. (Does Ctrl/Cmd r remove Start Beam and Mid Beam settings?)

Trying a different tack, I added a Time Signature to Measure 3 to see if a meter change would force the property to apply to all subsequent measures. Again, no luck.

Any ideas on setting 3-3-2 beaming on this entire piece?

      Tabature beaming property Test 02.mscz

scorster

Reply

• Jan 13, 2022 - 09:59

Re: Tablature beaming property Test 02
It looks to me as if from m2 and onwards the notes/chords themselves have an explicitly defined beaming pattern set (start and middle); which is I assume why applying a new time signature does not seem to take effect. The local setting has priority over the time signature.

Try selecting m2 (either tablature or standard staff seems ok) and with that range selection active press the AUTO option in the beams palette. For me this made that measure follow the time signature.

Further evidence to this process:
Added a plain 4/4 to m3 (so beam properties 4-4), then selected from m3 till end of score and applied "AUTO" beam, which gives no visual change, but does remove the local overrides. Now adding the custom time signature (3-3-2) to m4 will see that beaming take effect.
So does removing all but the first time signature.

Reply

• Jan 13, 2022 - 20:30

Hi jeetee,

You've saved the day! I had a much larger five page score that was in the same condition, and now it's fixed too. I think it's MusicXML provenance had pulled beam settings from the application I had originally scored it in. So it's fixed now as well

Thank you so much!

As you can see, I was suspicious that a beam settings were overriding the meter's rule:

scorster wrote > >When I noticed the property failing to affect subsequent measures thought perhaps I'd set some beaming manually, and that was taking precedence over the meter setting, so I tried Ctrl/Cmd r to reset beams. No improvement. (Does Ctrl/Cmd r remove Start Beam and Mid Beam settings?)

.. but I was using the wrong tool (Ctrl/Cmd r) to try to reset them. Thanks for the AUTO tip!

And though the score is now publishable, I came upon a nightmarish situation at the very last step, for which a workaround has spared me an overhaul of redoing beam angles and line breaks, and who know what else. Without burying the lead, the punchline is this: When adding or deleting a meter (identical to the surrounding meter) shouldn't MuseScore lay off removing line breaks? (The work around was to leave the meter and make it invisible.)

So why was the "superfluous" meter there in Measure 2?

In my five page piece—as a trouble shooting technique specific to the beaming issue being discussed—I added an addition meter of 4/4 in Measure 2 so I could experiment with it's beaming property and see if that made any effect. Indeed, the lack of any effect confirmed my suspicion that something was blocking the meter's beaming property.

I figured I could safely address that later, so delved into the details. I continued grooming the piece, adding line breaks and page breaks.

Then after applying Jeetee's solution (Auto beam) I went through the entire five pages adjusting beam angles and setting line breaks.

Just before saving the document I noticed the extant "duplicate 4/4 meter" in Measure 2. I thought, "Well that will compete the job. Glad I noticed it." I selected it, deleted it, and BOOM: MuseScore ran its meter change clean sweep: discarding all line breaks AND all my manual beam adjustments. Probably 20 minutes of detailed work gone.

All to say, at times I find MuseScore somewhat bombastic in either swamping or denuding scores of properties on certain actions. Obviously this is a case in this instance. When the meter changes from 4/4 too 4/4 MuseScore really needs to throw out line breaks ... because supposedly there's no way to calculate where they should be? And as another example, why should an Staff/Part instrument necessarily change the Mixer's pan settings for that track?

Scorists would benefit from (at least the option) of an intermediary dialog where the user can see and toggle the addition or removal of various properties. Otherwise too much is left in the hands of MuseScore LAI (Lack of Artificial Intelligence.)

scorster

Reply