How can I change the beam type? (E.g. make something beamed as 16th notes to look like 8th note beaming)
Right now I'm writing a piece and want to use a non-standard time signature (9/20 in this instance), but I want the first beat, which is eighth notes in a quarter-note pulse, represented as a 2:5 tuplet, to appear as 8th notes. However, the tuplet automatically represents this as sixteenth note beaming, which I feel looks more confusing and makes less sense than if it were eighth-note beaming. How can I change the beam to look appropriate for the note length here, or otherwise how can I get rid of extra horizontal beams at will?
Below is a screenshot of the measures I'm working with (Bottom two staves are piano, top staff resting is flute). The phrase on the right in 4/4 is exactly what I want the 9/20 into 4/4 phrase on the left to sound like (the F# in the right hand being the beginning of a new measure). On the right you can see the first quarter-note beat is just two eighth notes -- I want that visually to be how the 2:5 in the 9/20 measure to look. I don't want to use a measure of 1/4 and I feel that a measure of 4/20 doesn't properly convey the metrical phrasing.
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| musescore tuplet issue.png | 44.5 KB |
Comments
I can probably make it happen but I'd need to use your actual score since a true 9/20 time signature is not possible in MuseScore but rather you are changing the display of a legal time signature.
Beamtype change from 16th to eighth: decrease Grow left and right to zero.
The right rhythmic distribution - vertical alignment - obviously needs some calculating to get the X- and Y-offsets right. Experiment also with the leading space.
Ok, not to divert attention from the topic, because I’d like to know how to do this, but... and I say this as a percussionist who has played, Cage, Xenakis, Crumb, etc... what the heck is 9/20 supposed to mean? Whatever you’re trying to accomplish can be done with a 16 or a 32 on the bottom. You can still have odd groupings of notes (5+4 or 3+2+2+2) and not have to explain the the performer that an 8th note isn’t really an 8th note.
Without understanding more about what you are trying to do or why, I can't guarantee this is what you want, but in "normal" situations you can control whether notes are displayed as eighths or sixteenth or whatever using Add / Tuplets / Other and choosing the most appropriate ratio. For example, in 4/4 with quarter note as the full duration, 3:2 would display eighths, 3:4 would display sixteenths.