3 eighth notes

• Jan 10, 2021 - 02:41

When writing a piece, I usually have this:

Eighth rest, eighth note eighth note eighth note

Whenever I input this into musescore, it always connects together. Is there a way to make it so that the first eighth note after the rest can not be connected to the other 2 eighth notes?

Thanks!
(PS: I'm using MuseScore 3.6.0 Beta)


Comments

No, unfortunately our beaming algorithms are not quite so sophisticated. You can say you want eighth notes always beamed in twos by default, but you can't say you want them in fours except when the first (or last) is a rest.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

upvoting this change as hard as I can. 3 eighth notes preceded by an eighth rest should NOT be beamed as 3 but instead as 1 + 2 -- in scores with multiple eighth note triplets this can easily confuse readers, and requires hand re-working that is quite a productivity killer.

In reply to by mmcclung

A) Three 8th notes after an 8th rest should be beamed in most situations.
B) Those links work perfectly. Nonetheless, they were links to the previous version's Handbook. While mostly correct, they might have some incorrect information for the current version, so try these.

https://handbook.musescore.org/notation/rhythm-meter-and-measures/beams

and

https://handbook.musescore.org/notation/rhythm-meter-and-measures/time-…
especially
https://handbook.musescore.org/notation/rhythm-meter-and-measures/beams…

In reply to by TheHutch

We'll have to agree to disagree on the "should" aspect (I'm writing for jazz ensemble, with a fair percentage of beginners, and it's much easier for them to read in groups of one + two where there's an eighth rest involved among the four notes).

Thank you for the correct links, still frustrating that this is all or nothing (all twos or all fours, when there is a clear benefit to the engraving's awareness of the difference between four eighth notes vs three eighth notes and an eighth rest, but so be it).

It also seems like a UX/XD lapse that this feature is hidden behind the time signature of a given staff. Moreover, it only affects one staff, not the system.

Hence, I stand by my upvoting of at least making it readily available in the Style section, and introducing an option for contextual ungrouping in the instance of an eighth rest.

In reply to by mmcclung

FWIW, the usual rule is that three eighth notes followed by a rest must be broken as 2+1, but for three eighths preceded by a rest, it is considered optional, and different editors will follow different "house style" rules for this. It's definitely a known limitation of the current system that there is no way to set a default for this, or for beaming over rests, which is also optional but many editors will do it as part of their own house style. So it's on the radar for sure.

The issue with making this a style setting is that it would really be specific to to the time signature as to which rests on which beats should get which treatment. Note that once you change the settings for one time signature, you can easily Ctrl+Shift+drag it to another to then affect the whole system, or to the palette for easy reuse of your custom settings.

Also, in case you didn't realize this: it's only a single click/keystroke (you can define a shortcut for "break beam left") to break the beam immediately after entering that second eighth note. So it should be practically negligible in terms of productivity.

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