Changing to optical cross-staff beam spacing

You can make the stems in cross-staff beams, rather than the noteheads, evenly spaced in each layout independently. This can make it easier to perceive the evenness of rhythmic spacing in cross-staff beams than when noteheads are evenly spaced.

Procedure

  1. Open Layout Options in any of the following ways:

    • Press Cmd-Shift-L.

    • In the toolbar, click Application Menu Application Menu button and choose Layout Options.

  2. In the Layouts list, select the layouts that you want to change to optical cross-staff beam spacing.

    By default, the layout currently open in the music area is selected when you open the dialog. You can select other layouts by using the selection options in the action bar or by clicking and dragging across multiple layouts.

  3. Click Note Spacing in the category list.
  4. Activate Use optical spacing for beams between staves.
  5. Click Apply, then Close.

Result

Optical cross-staff beam spacing is enabled in the selected layouts.

Example

Figure 1. Default spacing: The distance between noteheads is even.
Figure 2. Optical spacing for cross-staff beaming: The distance between stems is even.