Automatic beams

By default, beams are inserted automatically:

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

If these automatic decisions are not satisfactory, beaming can be entered explicitly; see Manual beams. It is also possible to define beaming patterns that differ from the defaults. The default beaming rules for most common time signatures are defined in scm/auto-beam.scm. If there are no beaming rules defined for a particular beam's duration in the time signature being used, its beaming is controlled by the values of three context properties, measureLength, beatLength and beatGrouping. Both the beaming rules and the context properties can be overridden, see Setting automatic beam behavior.

Note: If beams are used to indicate melismata in songs, then automatic beaming should be switched off with autoBeamOff and the beams indicated manually.

Automatic beaming may be turned off and on with \autoBeamOff and \autoBeamOn commands:

     
     c4 c8 c8. c16 c8. c16 c8
     \autoBeamOff
     c4 c8 c8. c16 c8.
     \autoBeamOn
     c16 c8

Predefined commands

\autoBeamOff, \autoBeamOn.

Selected Snippets

Beams across line breaks

Line breaks are normally forbidden when beams cross bar lines. This behavior can be changed as shown:

     
     \relative c'' {
       \override Beam #'breakable = ##t
       c8 c[ c] c[ c] c[ c] c[ \break  
       c8] c[ c] c[ c] c[ c] c
     }
     

Changing beam knee gap

Kneed beams are inserted automatically when a large gap is detected between the note heads. This behavior can be tuned through the auto-knee-gap property. A kneed beam is drawn if the gap is larger than the value of auto-knee-gap plus the width of the beam object (which depends on the duration of the notes and the slope of the beam). By default auto-knee-gap is set to 5.5 staff spaces.

     
     {
       f8 f''8 f8 f''8
       \override Beam #'auto-knee-gap = #6
       f8 f''8 f8 f''8
     }

See also

Notation Reference: Manual beams, Setting automatic beam behavior.

Installed Files: scm/auto-beam.scm.

Snippets: Rhythms.

Internals Reference: Beam.

Known issues and warnings

Automatically kneed cross-staff beams cannot be used together with hidden staves. See Hiding staves.

Beams can collide with note heads and accidentals in other voices

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