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emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:22 pm
by Michiel1990
Hi all,

I am composing a piece in the style of a Dutch minimalist. His scores are beautifull but complex. He uses a free form of beaming notes of split stems together to show the pianist the resulting patterns in a compound melody. As such:

Image

Could somebody brainstorm with me how to achieve this in Finale 26?

thanks in advance :)

EDIT: the example above comes from "Lemniscaat" composed by Simeon ten Holt

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:05 pm
by Peter Thomsen
Welcome to the forum!

I am not sure I understand the meaning of this notation.
Are the beamed 8ths supposed to performed as 16ths (played accentuated), or are they supposed to be sustained (as 8ths or perhaps as 4trs)?

However, the layout is possible.
It can be done with layers, hidden rests and (nothing displaying) tuplets.

Example:
The upper line could be done in a separate layer as
- hidden 4tr rest,
- nothing displaying tuplet: 1 Eighth in the space of 4 Eighths
- nothing displaying tuplet: 1 Eighth in the space of 2 Eighths

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:38 pm
by Michiel1990
Thanks, I'm definitly going to try your solution. The answer to your question is both. articulation, dynamics and amount of repetitions of one section are free of choice for the player. The beams simply give a graphic aid to the player so he knows where the resulting patterns are in the 'minimal motive'. Which is composed as a compound melody. This helps the player to decide which groups of note to accentuate or sustain. but as said, both are allowed.

it's really quite interesting music, I recommend it :)

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:54 pm
by motet
This should be doable with tuplets in another layer, but Finale seems buggy. Here, the red and green tuplets are "3 eighths in the space of 5", but it's not rendered correctly, as you can see. I'll attach a .musx file in case anyone wants to hack on it.

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 8:34 pm
by zuill
2 eights in place of 5 is what you meant. I think what you are getting looks right. 5 eighths is 10 16ths, so the second note of the 2 is starting on the 2nd group of 5 16ths. Or am I missing something?

Zuill

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:38 pm
by zuill
To get the look, I did 2 8ths in the place of 8 8ths, and the notes align as needed.

Zuill

P.S.: It gets HP a bit confused. Without HP playback is fine. Not sure what's up with that.

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:38 pm
by motet
Ah, thank you. 2:8 does make sense to me now.

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 1:10 am
by motet
zuill wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:38 pm
It gets HP a bit confused. Without HP playback is fine. Not sure what's up with that.
That is indeed odd. You wouldn't want to play the duplets since each duplet note is the length of a half-note, but even with playback disabled for those notes, playback is messed up with HP on.

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 5:18 am
by zuill
You can also just use continuous 8ths or 16ths and hide the ones you don't need.

Zuill

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 10:35 am
by Michiel1990
Thanks everybody. The solution using tuplets is perfect :)

Re: emphasize compound melody with custom beaming

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:01 am
by motet
With JW Change you can change the thickness of selected beams, it turns out, which might look good.