Next: Setting automatic beam behavior, Up: 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; see Setting automatic beam behavior. The default beaming rules are defined in scm/auto-beam.scm.
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
\autoBeamOff
,
\autoBeamOn
.
Beaming patterns may be altered with the beatGrouping
property,
\time 5/16 \set beatGrouping = #'(2 3) c8[^"(2+3)" c16 c8] \set beatGrouping = #'(3 2) c8[^"(3+2)" c16 c8]
The beams of consecutive 16th (or shorter) notes are, by default,
not sub-divided. That is, the three (or more) beams stretch
unbroken over entire groups of notes. This behavior can
be modified to sub-divide the beams into sub-groups by setting
the property subdivideBeams
. When set, multiple beams
will be sub-divided at intervals defined by the current value of
beatLength
by reducing the multiple beams to just one beam
between the sub-groups. Note that beatLength
lives in the
Score
context and defaults to a quarter note. It must be
set to a fraction giving the duration of the beam sub-group
using the make-moment
function, as shown here:
c32[ c c c c c c c] \set subdivideBeams = ##t c32[ c c c c c c c] % Set beam sub-group length to an eighth note \set Score.beatLength = #(ly:make-moment 1 8) c32[ c c c c c c c] % Set beam sub-group length to a sixteenth note \set Score.beatLength = #(ly:make-moment 1 16) c32[ c c c c c c c]
For more information about make-moment
, see
Time administration.
Line breaks are normally forbidden when beams cross bar lines.
This behavior can be changed by setting the breakable
property: \override Beam #'breakable = ##t
.
\override Beam #'breakable = ##t c8 \repeat unfold 15 { c[ c] } c
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
Notation Reference: Manual beams, Setting automatic beam behavior.
Installed Files: scm/auto-beam.scm.
Snippets: Rhythms.
Internals Reference: Beam.
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
This page is for LilyPond-2.11.58 (development-branch).
Report errors to http://post.gmane.org/post.php?group=gmane.comp.gnu.lilypond.bugs.
Your suggestions for the documentation are welcome.