New beaming discussion: wedges, etc.

• Jan 10, 2023 - 20:11

To preface, I'm not complaining, because this is still highly customizable and I've never had any expectation of being satisfied with the raw MuseScore defaults.

But I was skeptical about the "wedges" issue from the first time I read about it. Although I do see wedges being avoided in published scores/parts, as a performer, I've never been drawn to them when they do occur. And the new beaming logic is causing new distractions, which are in my opinion more significant than the wedges themselves.

1) I think beams come too close to noteheads now. The stems will often settle for a 7th instead of an octave or more. This is expected in many situations, such as multiple voices or stems reaching beyond the staff, but it looks unnecessarily cluttered to me when it occurs within the staff. (They also cuddle with flats now)

2) The differing slope between pitches and beams can be distracting, mainly if it occurs in a simple diatonic unidirectional line within the staff.

In the below example you can see my tweaked version contains 5 added wedges but less quirky beam contour. I'm preparing parts for an ensemble that'll probably be sight-reading, and I think they'd rather deal with tiny wedges than big fat beams telling a different story than the noteheads.
Screen Shot 2023-01-10 at 3.09.54 PM.png
I also added 0.1 leading space on the accidentals because those look too close for me.

Opinions?

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