Creating centered beams

You can center beams between the notes in the beamed group. You can do this for the current layout and frame chain only, or for all layouts and frame chains.

Note

As this action requires changing the direction of some stems in order to appear correctly, it is located in the Stem submenu rather than the Beaming submenu.

Prerequisite

You have chosen the appropriate property scope for local properties.

Procedure

  1. Select at least one note in each of the beams you want to center.
  2. Create a centered beam in one of the following ways:
    • If the selected beams include notes on both sides of the middle staff line, choose Edit > Notations > Stem > Force Centered Beam.

    • If the selected beams include notes only on one side of the middle staff line, choose Edit > Notations > Stem > Custom Centered Beam to open the Custom Centered Beam dialog.

    Tip

    You can also choose these options from the context menu.

  3. Optional: If you created a custom centered beam, change the stem direction of each note in the selected beams as required in the Custom Centered Beam dialog, then click OK.

Result

Beams are centered between the notes in the selected beam groups. If the property scope was set to Locally, this change only takes effect in the current layout and frame chain.

If you select notes in multiple beams, each beam is centered separately. If you want to create a single centered beam, you can beam the notes in those beam groups together. You can do this both before and after centering the beams.

Note
  • Dorico SE automatically angles the beam based on the shape of the phrase, but you can change the angles or slants of beams manually.

  • You can assign a key command for Force Centered Beam on the Key Commands page in Preferences.