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Topic: Beaming notes (Read 2410 times) previous topic - next topic

Beaming notes

Barber Shop music is usually written with tenor/lead & baritone/bass on same staffs but with note stems in opposite directions. I can do this easily with with insert chord member command. What I can't do is put a beam across both sets of notes, or at least I can't find the way to do it. Once I highlight the two notes to beam, I can either beam the top set  or the bottom set but not both. Help!

Re: Beaming notes

Reply #1 –
You're right, this is one of the major difficulties with single-staff "chorded" voices. I believe that this issue was one of the most compelling reasons for NoteWorthy to create the Staff Layering feature, which was still flagged as "experimental" in the V1.5x releases, but achieved full feature status as of V1.70.

Re: Beaming notes

Reply #2 –
As Fred mentioned, use staff layering. Here is how I do it with SATB (say, soprano and alto):

One staff contains the soprano (stems up), and may also contain some of the alto (stems down or up).

Where beaming creates a conflict, I place the beam-down alto on a second staff. This will be layered with the first when printed. This second staff is not the complete alto voice, since some of its notes are sharing the soprano staff. To keep the notes aligned, the second staff has rests wherever needed (made invisible).

One other technique: I created the nwslurs font (see the Scriptorium) to solve the problem where beams and slurs/ties take up too much white space in SATB music with lyrics between SA and TB staves. The nwslurs can be placed as free text items, and moved wherever. They have no effect on MIDI.