Node:Beaming, Next:, Previous:Polyphony, Up:Notation manual



Beaming

Beams are used to group short notes into chunks that are aligned with the metrum. They are inserted automatically in most cases:

     \time 2/4 c8 c c c \time 6/8 c c c c8. c16  c8
     

[picture of music]

When these automatic decisions are not good enough, beaming can be entered explicitly. It is also possible to define beaming patterns that differ from the defaults.

See also

Beam.

Manual beams

In some cases it may be necessary to override the automatic beaming algorithm. For example, the auto beamer will not put beams over rests or bar lines. Such beams are specified by manually: the begin and end point are marked with [ and ]:

       \context Staff {
         r4 r8[ g' a r8] r8 g[ | a] r8
       }
     

[picture of music]

Normally, beaming patterns within a beam are determined automatically. When this mechanism fouls up, the properties Voice.stemLeftBeamCount and Voice.stemRightBeamCount can be used to control the beam subdivision on a stem. If either property is set, its value will be used only once, and then it is erased.

       \context Staff {
         f8[ r16 f g a]
         f8[ r16 \property Voice.stemLeftBeamCount = #1 f g a]
       }
     

[picture of music]

The property subdivideBeams can be set in order to subdivide all 16th or shorter beams at beat positions, as defined by the beatLength property . This accomplishes the same effect as twiddling with stemLeftBeamCount and stemRightBeamCount, but it take less typing:

             c16[ c c c c c c c]
             \property Voice.subdivideBeams = ##t
             c16[ c c c c c c c]
             \property Score.beatLength = #(ly:make-moment 1 8)
             c16[ c c c c c c c]
     

[picture of music]

Kneed beams are inserted automatically, when a large gap is detected between the note heads. This behavior can be tuned through the object property auto-knee-gap.

Normally, line breaks are forbidden when beams cross bar lines. This behavior can be changed by setting allowBeamBreak.

Bugs

Automatically kneed beams cannot be used together with hidden staves.


This page is for LilyPond-2.0.0 (stable-branch).

Report errors to <bug-lilypond@gnu.org>.