Beam these notes!

• Jul 16, 2018 - 16:27

How do I control which notes are beamed together?

I'm working on a piece in 2/4, with many bars of eighth notes. I want a bar in which the first eighth note is on its own, and the next three are beamed together. For example, bars 1 and 43 (and many others) of the attached piece.

I've tried the beaming commands described in https://musescore.org/en/handbook/beams and MuseScore 2.2.0 doesn't respect my wishes. I've disconnected the first eighth note using the "do not beam this note" command. So far, so good.

But no luck beaming the remaining three eighth notes. I've tried selecting the first one and double-clicking "do not end a beam at this note", "start a beam at this note". I've opened the beam inspector, but that appears just to let me tweak the appearance of an extant beam.

I was looking for a beaming command like "do not end a beam at this note" that forced the start of a beam on that note. Better, let me select a few notes and click "keep these notes beamed"?

Thank you!
-Ben

Attachment Size
Mosquito_Dance.mscz 40.74 KB

Comments

Perhaps an explanation of the beams will help.

The single note (Do not beam this note) will never be attached to another
The note that has a beam going to the right only (Start beaming) will never attach to the note on the left, but will attach to the note on the right if the note is willing.
The note with beams on both sides (Middle beaming) will attach to any note on the left or right that is willing.

The single note is not willing to attach to any other note.
The note that has a beam going on the right only is only willing to attach to notes on the right
The note with beams on both sides is willing to attach to any other note

The question seems to be, how do I make a singe note followed by three beamed notes. The answer is to make the four notes in this order: Do not beam, Start beaming, Middle beaming, Middle beaming.

In every case, you can end a beam group by making the next note a Start beaming note. Two consecutive Start beaming notes, will not attach to each other since the second one will not attach to any note to its left.

HTH.

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