Difficulty notating 12/16 time

• Jul 17, 2015 - 21:51

I am trying to notate a piece in 12/16 time: effectively swing 4/4 time. I would like to beam it in a way exactly similar to the example score attached. But there seems to be no way of doing this in MuseScore without encountering difficulty. The time signature dialog simply does not allow the user to beam the score as illustrated.

The best way to illustrate this is to try setting up a 12/16 time sig and then notating the first few bars for yourself (just the staff, not the TAB) …

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guitar_score.gif 58.62 KB

Comments

What specifically did you have problems with? Setting the defaults in Time Signature Properties to beam eighths in groups of 3 + 3 and sixteenths 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 seems to work fine from what I can tell. The alternative of eighths 3 + 3 and sixteenths 6 + 6 produces *almost* the same, but the partial beams in measure would point the "wrong" way.

I have attached another few bars of music in 12/16 with a few comments. In short:

* An issue with a faulty beaming pattern and how you correct it with the "beam semiquaver sub" tool.

* Difficulty using the time sig properties to set up a 12/16 beaming pattern

* Better to allow the user to beam using dotted 1/8th notes rather than 1/8th notes?

I also found a strange bug in the time signature part of the master palette. Set up and add a 12/16 time sig, with the same beaming properties as in the attached score. Now click on another non-12/16 time sig, then click back on the 12/16 time sig. The latter seems to revert to the default fully-beamed pattern, but if you click it again it will show the correct pattern!

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time_sig_properties.mscz 15 KB

In reply to by geetar

As I said previously, you need to set the sixteenth note beaming to 3+3+3+3 if you want the partial beam on a sixteenth beamed that. There should be nothing so baffling about it. You are trying to get MuseScore to beam that sixteenth as part of a group of three rather than the more usual beaming in groups of two. That's the whole reason it would point a partial beam backward from the usual direction.

EDIT: but I guess I do see why you'd expect this by default - it is compound time, after all. However, MuseScore just isn't that smart. It needs to be told about each new time signature; that's the purpose of this dialog. Note it also works to set the fourth sixteenth to sub beam; that would probably more "standard".

Setting the sub-beam does the trick as well, indeed, if you would prefer the stanmdard default elsewhere but just want to override it here. These icons mostly control the beam *in*, not the beam *out*, so that is why you click the note after the "problem" note. You are telling MuseScore, "don't draw a sixteenth beam into this note", and that is why the partial sixteenth beam that otherwise would have been drawn leading to that note has nowhere else to go but the other way. it's kind of an indrect manual way of doing what setting the sixteenth beaming to 3+3+3+3 does much more directly.

BTW, the sub-beam is reversed the usual way - by setting the beaming on that third note back to Auto.

Not sure what you mean about quavers occuring singly in 12/16 swing time. Swing, first of all, is not normally written in compound meter at all. It's normally written using ordinary eighths or sixteenth and the word "swing". What you are writing here is ordinary compound meter, not swing. In any case, if you are saying you expect the eighths to not be beamed, then you can make this to happen as well, by setting the eighth note beaming to 1+1+1+1+1+1, but that seems weird and very much at odds with how it appears in the source you posted. So apparently I am not understanding you.

But in any event, setting the beaming options as I described has exactly the effect shown in your original file. If you feel further examples or explanations would help in the Handbook, feel free to edit it.

In reply to by geetar

I'm not quite following the bug you mention. Are you talking about starting from your current score or a different one? Are you talking about adding the 12/16 to the master palette, to a custom palette, or to your score? More precise step by step instructions would help.

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