Beaming notes in 6/8 time.

• Feb 7, 2019 - 13:03

I have sections of a score where there are one eighth note followed by one eighth rest followed by one eighth note. I want to beam the two eighth notes, but the beam tool does not let me do this. Is this because of the rest separating the notes? If so, how can I accomplish the beaming? Many 6/8 scores beam notes in this fashion.

Thanks for your help.

Ralph


Comments

In reply to by underquark

Just following up on this... In 6/8 time, I find this:

easier.png

...much easier to read than this:

harder.png

...as do most players I know. It's entirely kosher, too—from Alfred's "Essential Dictionary of Music Notation":

book_example.png

In MuseScore 4, Is it still necessary to select each rest manually and extend the beam over it? Or is there finally a way to set default behaviour for beaming over rests within normally-beamed groups?

I've looked in Time Signature Properties (R-click time signature > Time Signature Properties), but as far as I can tell, you can control only note beaming there.

For what it's worth, my 14-year-old Sibelius 6 had a "Beam Over Rests" box:

sibelius_beams.png

...that, when selected, caused rests within that score's normally-beamed groups to be beamed over automatically. Seems like a pretty easy approach—but I know people here have varying opinions about how many choices MS should allow us. 😏 Thanks!

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harder.png 2.84 KB
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In reply to by Andy Fielding

"In MuseScore 4, Is it still necessary to select each rest manually and extend the beam over it? "

Fortunately, no!I
Many things in MuseScore can be set and affined by the feature: Select / More - see GIF below.

NB: Of course, you can also simplify the process in a single step for your particular use case. Simply select/More, and press OK in the dialog box. All rests will be selected, so click on the symbol in the Beam Properties palette.
I wanted to show that there's an additional ability to refine the choice according to the value of the rests (which Sibelius 6 doesn't seem to allow?)
This can be useful in certain situations.

Video rests.gif

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