Extending secondary beams over rests

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motet
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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 7:02 pm

Is there any way to get this
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without also getting this?
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The latter is ugly.


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zuill
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Post by zuill » Wed May 03, 2017 7:09 pm

I can't recall if there is a global way. I would just leave the setting alone and manually drag the secondary beams where needed. If there's lots of them, one can copy/paste from one measure to another to speed things up.

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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 7:16 pm

Alas.

It's a huge piece. The latter is more common than the former, but the former would also involve moving rests, so I don't know which to do (if either). I was hoping JW could help.

Thanks.

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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 7:31 pm

Barring manual tweaking, it's a mess whatever combination of settings I pick, rests as well as beams.
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motet
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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 7:58 pm

How in fact do you adjust the length of secondary beams?

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Wed May 03, 2017 8:05 pm

Double-click on the handle when in the Beam Extension Tool and choose only 16th for your example.

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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 8:41 pm

Thanks. The beam length doesn't change proportionally with measure spacing but I think I can overlap the two outer beams and it will be OK if I choose to alter the four-note variety.

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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 9:12 pm

The copy filter here is funky--sometimes it copies the beam extensions, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it will do only part of a measure that has two or more.

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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 11:20 pm

The copy filter seems to only work if the stems are pointing in the same direction.

Here's another issue: when the notes are on the middle line, if, after extending the beams manually, you try to move the rest up with Simple entry--mouse or arrow-key nudge--the notes flip and the beam extensions are trashed.
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They then can't be flipped back with L--when you do that, they stay unflipped, but the articulations move to the wrong side of the note.
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If you try to flip it with Utilities/Stem direction, you get a real mess.
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Fortunately, moving the rest with Speedy entry avoids the problem (though the beam extensions don't display in the Speedy entry frame). Notes elsewhere on the staff seem OK.

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motet
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Post by motet » Wed May 03, 2017 11:57 pm

Also, you can't copy partial measures with a mouse click, only by dragging.

It's really unfortunate that the length of extended beams are absolute, not proportional to the whole beam.

Other than that, it works perfectly. :-)
Last edited by motet on Thu May 04, 2017 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 12:02 am

Secondary "half" beams can't be extended in any kind of useful way, as shown in beats 2 and 3. (I would like to shorten them in this case.)
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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 12:08 am

Here's a potential work-around: Put eighth notes in layer two, then flip and drag the beam to cover the secondary beams.
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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 12:19 am

After all that, it occurred to me to just use a smart line over the secondary beams. I'll leave the above struggle for posterity, though.

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Post by David_ » Thu May 04, 2017 5:00 am

Yep, the default options are all unsatisfactory. I wrote to MM years ago with a feature request about this but it obviously slipped through the cracks.
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Post by OCTO » Thu May 04, 2017 8:19 am

David Clarence wrote:Yep, the default options are all unsatisfactory. I wrote to MM years ago with a feature request about this but it obviously slipped through the cracks.
Yes, that is one of the features often found in music. I have really no idea why it is not included in Finale, or even considered after so many years of development. Even MuseScore 2 does it well.
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Post by OCTO » Thu May 04, 2017 8:50 am

This is my solution. "Solution" doesn't mean that it is OK for MM to neglect this problem.
https://youtu.be/iAuY6PogPd0
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Post by Ere Lievonen » Thu May 04, 2017 10:44 am

OCTO wrote:This is my solution. "Solution" doesn't mean that it is OK for MM to neglect this problem.
https://youtu.be/iAuY6PogPd0
I never thought of this! I like this "solution". Although it's not a solution, it's workaround. But I like it still.
Does this method result in exactly the same note spacing as the other methods?
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu May 04, 2017 12:17 pm

OCTO’s workaround is for documents where “Extend Beams Over Rests” is de-selected.

Here is a workaround for documents where “Extend Beams Over Rests” is selected:
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Post by OCTO » Thu May 04, 2017 1:07 pm

Ere Lievonen wrote:
OCTO wrote:This is my solution. "Solution" doesn't mean that it is OK for MM to neglect this problem.
https://youtu.be/iAuY6PogPd0
I never thought of this! I like this "solution". Although it's not a solution, it's workaround. But I like it still.
Does this method result in exactly the same note spacing as the other methods?
Yes, a workaround.
The note-spacing is kept regular. Which other methods you mean for comparison?
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Post by Ere Lievonen » Thu May 04, 2017 1:41 pm

OCTO wrote:Which other methods you mean for comparison?
All the ones already mentioned in this thread.
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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 4:28 pm

After watching Octo's video many times I finally figured it out (perhaps in this case a few words would be worth more than a thousand pictures?) Very clever, though there is a playback problem to be addressed, and one must place the vertical level of the "rests" manually. By the way, "beam over barlines" is a misnomer.

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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 6:04 pm

Here's the smart-line solution, for what it's worth. The smart lines are pretty easy to draw. In the case of down-stem notes, no adjustment is necessary to the anchor points. In the case of up-stem, since the anchor point is the left edge of the notehead, the anchor points must be changed. Since upon drawing the line is the right length, though, the whole line can be moved to the right after drawing instead of doing each endpoint separately. Rests sometime need to be moved depending on the notes, but often not.
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Post by zuill » Thu May 04, 2017 6:19 pm

I believe I worked with this in the past, but don't recall what I did. Possibly the following was one workaround.

Select the option to beam over rests for secondary beams. Then, to get the shorter beam in the spots with the 8th followed by 16th rest and 16th note, move the 16th rest to the right to get the proper short beam length, then hide it. Lastly, with Voice 2, enter a 16th rest.

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Post by John Ruggero » Thu May 04, 2017 7:27 pm

There was a discussion of this topic at the MM Feature Requests recently:

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/ ... ver%20rest

MM spokesman Michael Johnson's reply was positive but hedged: "Unfortunately, there is work that is more pressing ahead of this story, but I do want to provide the control to the high-end user sooner rather than later." Apparently high end users will need to wait a bit longer for Finale to be able to do something so basic that it is amazing that it wasn't in version 1.
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Post by motet » Thu May 04, 2017 7:40 pm

There's really nothing high-end about this "story." It seems like it would be an easy fix for them--"Extend secondary beams over rests" works just fine. They only need to disable it in the case of the short beams, which I guessing no one wants anyway.

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