You can insert a screenshot by dragging it into the comment box. No Finale files, though.

Wow - that's a great one to know ! Thanks ! Anyway, this is how I would like my music to look automatically. But how to achieve it ??????

Ian Swedlund,

Try these settings:

That is quite 'non-standard', which is probably why you had difficulty getting Patterson beams to do it.

I wouldn't describe it as 'beautiful'. ;-)

But we all know where beauty lies, so, who are we to say?

"She had a non-standard face, but I liked it." 

Not the best description...

“Beautiful Beamer” …

(sorry, could not resist)

>“Beautiful Beamer” …<

Huh????

(Actually, Beautiful Dreamer is one of many Stephen Foster songs in my repertoire)

And once again, the thread wanders away like a basket of puppies...  <grin>

Thanks Peter, your settings are a great improvement. Still one very small improvable thing, but I can imagine that it would be almost certainly unmanageable through the document settings ...... And thanks to all of you for some very funny comments - unexpected treasures provoked by the word "beautiful" !!!

Ian Swedlund,

In your first post you wrote:

“… beamed in such a way that in a scale (up or down) the beams would follow along from each other with a similar angle and stem height …”

I have studied the attached graphic in your latest post, and I am afraid I do not understand.

Your latest post seems to be about something else than beaming in a scale.

Please be more specific.

Try to explain:

1) Why is the first line “all beautiful”?

2) Why is the second line “not always quite so beautiful”?

3) Why is the third line “beautiful again”?

You distinguish between downward stems and upward stems.

Are upward stems always beautiful?

Hi Peter

It's a very small difference, and it's not any more about the simple scale beaming (which is perfect now with your settings).

It is an ideal situation when the beam angles (slopes) follow the line of the music as this actually helps the player to read it. But when the line of the music is "jumbled" (up and down) then the best beaming solution is just to stay flat and "neutral". 

The "not so beautiful" beams are when a group of beamed notes goes up and down yet the beam, instead of staying flat (which would be ideal), has an angle. It is that angle that is "not beautiful" because it can be a little misleading in the sense that it suggests a musical line (pitch) direction that doesn't correspond to the actual "mixed directions". 

When the stems go up, even if the musical line is jumbled, the beam stays flat, which is ideal (as you will see in my examples). But when the stems go down then, even with exactly the same jumbled note patterns, the beams have that misleading angle (towards the last note).

Anyway, this is why it is difficult to get ideal beaming with the settings because we have to choose between "flatten all beams" (which does not help us to read note sequences that have a direction), or "choose beam angle according to one of the beamed notes" (which always gives us an angle but which may be misleading). Funnily enough, the aesthetics seem to correspond with the most informative beams in the sense that the most informative (or least misleading) beams are also the "most beautiful" !

Not easy to understand ..... but I tried my best to explain it. Definitely not worth worrying about ..... THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE

Hi Ian,

You could hire a plug-in developer to develop a Finale plug-in that can create “Swedlund Beaming”.

Probably you already know of a few plug-in developers (Patterson, Giesen, Williamson), but there are also others.

That really is a beautiful idea !!!!!!