[Solved] Beam over a rest - changes 1/8 1/16 1/16 into 1/4 1/16 1/16

• Jun 10, 2013 - 05:19

In the score attached I want to use a beam over a rest in measure 33 (also 34). I want to join the forth note (1/8) with the fifth note (1/16) across the rest (1/16).

Following http://musescore.org/en/node/11370, I select the rest and try to apply the beam by clicking on the econd entry in the beam property palette. When doing this the following happens:
- the first note changes from 1/8 to 1/4
- no beam is drawn

Further information:
- when selecting the second break (1/8) instead of the first one, the beam is drawn correctly between the adjacent notes
- the problem persists if the staccato mark on the note is removed
- the problem persists if the slur connecting the note is removed
- the problem persists if the triplet preceding the note is taken away

musescore 1.3 / 5702 on Ubuntu 12.10

Thanks for any info abount how to produce a beam in this case

Attachment Size
Faust.mscz 20.02 KB

Comments

• Jun 10, 2013 - 05:55

Thanks Shoichi. Selecting the rest and using CTRL-RIGHTARROW in combination with the beaming properties palette gives exaclty the expected result. Selecting the first note instead of the beam joins also in the triplet, which is not what I want (triplet should have a separate beam for clarity).

Shouldn't the manual be extended to cover this case? And when do you need to do this instead of just selecting the break?

Reply

• Jun 11, 2013 - 07:58

Shoichi, please look into the file attached:

- Measure 31: state when I enter the notes
- Measure 33: result when I select note, rest and note. Better, but not what I want, triplet should stay separated
- Measure 34: result when I select rest and note. This is the result I want

So your help was good, I was able to solve my problem here :-)

The critical information was that one can select more than just the rest and then apply beam properties to the selection. From the manual description I would not have had the idea to proceed like this.

I still do not understand the rationale behind it. It seems to me, that what is happening when only the rest is selected, is rather like a bug (why would the length of the note change from 1/8 to 1/4?). This makes it difficult for me to add something to the manual. I could only write something along the lines:

If you have a special case, potentially with notes of different length, try to select a note in addition to the rest and apply the beam property change to the selection

While this text would probably have helped me, I would prefer that someone knowledgeable writes a more precise manual entry.

Question to the musescore gods, what is your advise:
- Should I create an issue for this, filing it as a bug?
- Should I add something to the manual (and am I allowed to do so)?

Thanks again for your help!

Attachment Size
Faust_thanks_to_Shoichi.mscz 20.07 KB

Reply

• Jun 11, 2013 - 14:56

I believe the behavior with only the rest selected is a bug. The behavior is different but also bad on 2.0, so a bug should be filed if it hasn't already. I think the proper behavior on selecting only a rest would be for *nothing* to happen, at least at first (see below), but that's just an off-the-cuff response.

The fact that selecting both notes plus the rest produces a result other than you wanted does not seem to be a bug to me. You are applying "middle of beam" to the first note of the group, so naturally, it gets connected to the previous. Similarly, selecting only the last note shouldn't do anything, since there is not obviously anything to connect to. Applying the "middle of beam" to just the rest & last note seems to be the correct solution. Whether you do so by selecting both at once (always an option with all palette items, not sure why there would need to be a special note in the Handbook fore this specific case) or one at a time shouldn't matter, and indeed,.it does work to do it one at time - in either order, actually.

Reply

• Jun 12, 2013 - 06:02

Thanks to all who responded, let's sum it up.

1. There is a bug somewhere (either documentation or program)

Doing exactly what the manual says (select the rest, use "middle of beam"), does (for the score attached to this issue) not give the result advertized. Instead of creating the beam, it changes the value of the left note. So either the code is doing something wrong here or the manual does not describe the correct way of creating a beam in this situation.

Since the procedure described in the manual actually works in other cases, my guess would be that this should be regarded as a software bug (but then maybe it should never have worked like this... :)

So I'll report this as an issue

2. How should the user interface work in this case

I have to state here that while I am working with musescore on and off since a few years, I consider myself rather a beginner. So please bear with me if my view of things is not following the philosophy of musescore :-)

  • The way described in the manual seems pretty intuitive for me. You have a rest, a note left and a note right. You select the rest and apply "middle of beam" which will join the rest to the left as well to the right note. Fantastic, intuitive! Why did i need to read the manual in the first place? Only because I dod not know, that rests are treated like notes by musescore (at least in this case)
  • Selecting the rest and both notes will create the beam and join it to the triplet beam of the triplet to the left. I agree with the statement of Marc that this is to be more or less expected. I asked for the left note to be "middle of beam", so musescore puts it that way. I get what I asked for, fine with me
  • Selecting the rest and the note to the right on the other hand seems less intuitive to me. Why should I select the right note? I don't want it to be in the middle of the beam! In fact, seleting it I would expect that the second note to the right (there is one more note beside the right one) is also joined into the beam. But this is not happening. In fact, even if I re-select the note right to the rest and apply "middle of beam" this will not join in the second note to the right
  • On the other hand if I select the second note to the right of the rest and apply "middle of beam", it will join the note into the beam. So musescore seems to have in this case some kind of "leftish" or maybe rather "unsymmetric" behaviour. It will join notes into the beam being present on the left, but selecting the rightmost note being in the beam, it will not (at least in this case) join in a single note being on the right. So "middle of beam" is rather "middle of beam to the left" kind of...

I don't know what is right or wrong here. My feeling for the simple case of one rest, one note left and one right is: the feature should work as advertized in the documentation. For the left/right issue, as Marc points out, you (nearly) always have the possibility to select more than one note to act upon or you can even do the adjustments subsequently. So with some clicking I finally get what I want, and this is the important part.

If not joining in the note to the right of the beam by selecting the rightmost note in the beam is (another) bug or just the way musescore works, I can not tell. As a user I can definitely live with it, but maybe someone knowing how "things should really be" can have a look into this.

Reply

• Jun 12, 2013 - 16:24

Sorry, I had forgotten that selecting the rest only is supposed to work - I use this feature very seldom, since I prefer *not* to beam over rests in most cases.

On further testing, it seems it really does work most of the time. And in fact, when I tried creating an example just like yours from scratch, it worked. So I'm thinking your score has somehow become slightly corrupted, probably through whatever trial-and-error process you might have gone through in your initial attempts to get this working. The bug, then, exists in how the score got to the state it is in now. I don't suppose you have any recollection of the exact series of steps you might have followed?

Luckily, it does seem to be a bad corruption, and is easily fixed. In fact, it *really* easy to both fix the problem and get the result you want - select the entire measure and double click the "A" (for automatic) beaming icon. Not sure why this actually produces the beam-over-rest effect since that is not the normally the default. Actually, even just selecting the rest and double clicking "A" will make it beam that way, and least in a non-corrupt score. That's probably a bug in itself, but a convenient one right now :-)

As for why selecting the 'middle of beam" button might do good things when applied to the last eighth, I agree this is not exactly intuitive. As far as I can tell, "middle of beam" is actually a bit of a misnomer - it really only seems to affect the beam *into* the note, while leaving the state of any beam coming out unchanged. Notice there is no separate "end of beam" icon.

Reply

• Jun 12, 2013 - 19:49

Have spent about 2 hours now to reproduce the problem with either fresh score or by adding measures into the existing one. No success.

But there is definitely something wrong with this score:

* if you apply A when the full measure 31 is selected (piano 2 in the left hand), the connection is made, but the last note changes from 1/8 to 1/4

* if you do likewise with the right hand you get a full beam through the whole measure. When you split that beam on first the 4th note and then the 6th one and then reselect the 6th note again to take away the beam altogether (apply "no beam") then the 7th note changes from 1/8 to 1/4 but no rest goes away so that the total count in the measure is wrong

If I only knew why that is. I don't have the impression I did anything special during data entry.

Well I think I'll leave it here. Makes not much sense to file a bug report if I cannot provide a simple reproduceable case :-(

At least the notes are now as they should be. While I understand your point about beaming, In this special case I prefer to do the beaming, since it binds together the second beat (1/8, 1/16, 1/16) of the measure. It is complicated already with the triplet in the beginning and the beam makes it easier for me to play on the piano.

Thanks for your time and your explanations. I'll pay attention to this in the future and if ever I come up with a fileable scenario, I'll do so... :-)

Reply

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.