secondary beam angle tool and mid-beam stem lengths

[Rebecca Oswald]

Hello colleagues,

Starting point: sixteenth note tuplet group with some cross staffing. I created a secondary beam angle that tapers at one end. But the mid-beam stems show outside the beams (fig. A).

fig. A.png

When I lower the flawed stems with the beam stem adjust tool, the stems drop to create a space below the beam, leaving a tiny "stemlet" in the middle of the beam that still shows above the beam (fig. B).

fig. B.png

It would seem that the beam stem adjust tool is not useful in this case. How can those "stemlets" be adjusted so they are not visible outside the tapered beam?

Rebecca

[Peter Thomsen]

This is a well known problem with cross-staff notes in combination with feathered beaming.

It can only be solved via a workaround.

See the attached PDF files for two solutions.

Cross-StaffFeatheredBeams1.pdf.zip

Cross-StaffFeatheredBeams2.pdf.zip

[Rebecca Oswald]

Thanks, Peter! This is very helpful.

Rebecca

[Anders Hedelin]

If you haven't too many of these, or if they aren't as complicated as in Peter's examples, this might be a simple workaround:
Create the group as eighths, use the tuplet tool if necessary (fx 7 eighths in the place of 2), create the secondary beam as a shape expression.

Cross-staff feathered beam.PNG

The beauty of this solution is that it's simple, the disadvantage may be that the length of the shape expression has to be adjusted if the the width of the motive is altered.

[zuill]

I remembered working with this years ago. Here's an article that Robert Puff wrote:

https://www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/fina ... -notation/

Zuill

[Anders Hedelin]

Could this possibly achieve the same result with fewer steps?

Cross-staff feathered beam 2.PNG

[miker]

What does the feathered beam indicate? Is it a speedup or slowdown in tempo of the beamed group?

[N Grossingink]

What does the feathered beam indicate? Is it a speedup or slowdown in tempo of the beamed group?

3 beams collapsing to one means a slowdown. One beam sprouting to 3 a speedup. In my opinion, this kind of notation should be used for a solo instrument only. In an ensemble it seems to lose its identity simply because there is other stuff going on to grab the listener's attention. It's mainly used as a "shock value" effect.

[Anders Hedelin]

In my opinion, this kind of notation should be used for a solo instrument only. In an ensemble it seems to lose its identity simply because there is other stuff going on to grab the listener's attention. It's mainly used as a "shock value" effect.

It's also used in ensembles to indicate an accelerando/ritardando in one part, independent of the others.