For 4/4, automatically beam four eighth notes and pairs, but not triples.
Hi,
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, I haven't seen a way to specify a specific beaming behavior in 4/4 where across beats 1 + 2 or 3 + 4, all four eighth notes are beamed together, but if there are three eighth notes, only beam the pair. The current behavior is that if all four eighth notes are beamed together, then groups of three eighth notes are all beamed together. The only way to get this behavior where the quadruples are beamed, but only the pairs on the beat in triples are not, is to manually select the single eighth note that appears on the beat, and start a new beam, every time this happens. I think it would be very useful for many people if this was something that could be applied on a global level or a per-time signature definition level.
In the screenshot, the top system is the current behavior, while the bottom system is the behavior that needs to be specified manually every time it happens, if one defines 4/4 such that quadruples of eighth notes are beamed together.
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Comments
There is no way to automate what you want using the beaming properties in the time signature, which of course is where this is set. The only way to do what you want would be to write a plugin for it.
Realistically, this should happen by default, it's a deficiency of the beaming algorithm that we don't have a good way to make that happen. We treat the beaming groups too literally. Probably there should be a check to avoid groups of threes automatically, or perhaps a checkbox in time signature properties. Feel free to submit this to "Support / Issue tracker" above, as a "Suggestion".
In reply to Realistically, this should… by Marc Sabatella
see #287084: Add ability to, for 4/4, automatically beam sets of four and two eighth notes, but not triples.