Beaming inconsistent in keyboard music (treble vs bass)

• Mar 18, 2021 - 16:33

I am working on a piece of harpsichord music (see attached file), with grand staff, treble and bass clefs as usual. I want all the 8th notes in a measure beamed together, so I changed the default (click on time signature, click Properties in Inspector, and change using the icons). This works fine for the treble (upper staff), but the bass (bottom staff) retains the default of beaming each group of two 8ths separately. The selection from the score is in 2/4, but the same thing happened elsewhere in 3/4.

Note: the notes in the upper staff of the sample file all behaved fine as I entered them. I did two measures in the bass and fixed them manually, but if you try entering more 8th notes in the bass you will encounter the problem -- at least if your system behaves the same as mine. I am using 3.6.2 on Windows 10.

Attachment Size
beaming_test.mscz 11.04 KB

Comments

In reply to by redux02

Instead of going through the Properties in the Inspector, use the context menu (right-click the first time signature, treble clef -> Time signature properties - > change the beaming, then repeat: right-click again the second time signature, bass clef -> Time signature properties, etc).
In this case, it will work.
Indeed, you notice that if you just click a time signature , both of them are highlighted. Which was not the case with version 2 for example. I don't know what's expected anymore (and I think I've read some threads about it, but I don't remember what was intended)
EDIT: instead context menu: Ctlr + click first time signature, then Properties in Inspector (and again, Ctrl + click on the second one) works too.
See: beaming_test1.mscz

In reply to by cadiz1

Thank you, cadiz1! Either of your suggestions (right-click or Ctrl-click on the lower time signature, followed by Properties) shows that it has not been changed from the default. As you say, just clicking on the time signature (top or bottom) highlights both, which made me think both had been changed -- and the Properties showed that.

In reply to by redux02

Maybe I'm not following, but I see very clearly that your two time signatures are set differently, the top is set to beaming eighths in fours, the bottom is set to beam in twos.

Are you saying 1), you see something different from what I see, or 2) that you want it to be different than it is, or 3) that you see this and want this but aren't getting it when you enter eighths, or 4) you now understand the problem and can fix it yourself, so never mind?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc,

2) was the situation when I posted my message; I wanted both treble and bass to beam eighths in groups of four, not two, but only the treble was doing so. I thought that left-clicking on the time signature and adjusting the properties in the Inspector would do this (because both signatures were highlighted). Now I understand that I must do the two staves separately by right- or Ctrl-clicking, then fixing the properties. So now 4).

It would be less confusing if only one time signature was highlighted (the one that will get changed by adjusting the properties)

Thanks for making sure that I had solved it!

In reply to by redux02

Great! And yes, it's a known issue that there is confusion over what is actually selected when clicking a time signature. A possibility is that we'd leave it as all being selected then make the time signature properties actually applies to all, but a complication is that there is no guarantee all those time signatures are actually the same.

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