NOTATIO

Its almost like the beams are tearing the music apart in the Blackbird example.

Because the pattern is static, Finale's "Flatten all beams" produces what I consider the correct result for Blackbird: flat beams with the primary beam siting on top of the second staff line. (Finale does the same sort of thing as Faber with its other 3 beaming style settings but with shorter stems and less slant.) I think that Faber bothers our eyes because the beam slant implies movement to some goal that is not apparent.

Throughout Blackbird there are constant flat beams that I would slant; there must be a rule in effect that I am unaware of.
There is no way to account for the second example except engraving error.

John Ruggero wrote: I think that Faber bothers our eyes because the beam slant implies movement to some goal that is not apparent.

I think it's also that the beam slants more than the interval, which is very strange looking. The interval of a step (1/2 space if you want to think of it that way) is receiving a beam slant of 3/4 space, straddle to sit. The beaming is also unnecessarily creating many wedges which are easily avoided. I haven't looked much further but I was surprised to see so many poor beaming examples in post-"Behind Bars" Faber work. Hard to know the circumstances, we all have rush jobs, have to farm out work, low budget work, etc., but still, a lot of these beaming issues would have gotten better results with stock Sibelius settings so I'm not sure why the Faber engravers changed them. Old house style settings perhaps?

Fred G. Unn wrote: Check out measures 22, 33, 36, etc. It's just one example and the first thing I clicked on so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but m36 looks pretty awful to my eye:

Many things are pretty awful here, not just for you. It seems that E.G. works with just some composers. They have priorities as well.

I find the most beautiful beams (today produced digitally) with SCORE. It would be great to know what settings SCORE uses, or maybe it is up to manual job that needs some very talented engraver to execute it.
Check here one of my favourites:
http://www.notafina.de/noten/Konzert/6194

duplicate post

OCTO wrote:I find the most beautiful beams (today produced digitally) with SCORE. It would be great to know what settings SCORE uses, or maybe it is up to manual job that needs some very talented engraver to execute it.

I was a mediocre SCORE engraver. When I used SCORE I mostly did raw input for a team run by a NYC woman who is a phenomenal engraver. A lot of what I learned, I learned from her, especially how to run large jobs. Anyway, we always used Tom Brodhead's BEAM program to tidy up the beaming before output. It was highly customizable, and although I don't have any idea what her settings actually were, we got great results from using it.

Here's the link: http://home.comcast.net/~tom.brodhead/beam.htm

If you check out some of Tom's work for Elliott Carter, I know he used BEAM to automate some of the "stemlets" too: http://home.comcast.net/~tom.brodhead/samples.htm

OCTO, I looked through the violin concerto and understand why you like it so much. It is a remarkable work of engraving. I found no glaring errors and most of the beaming seemed natural to me. So chalk up one for BEAM. (Or maybe the editor?)

Fred, In these example I see some things in BEAM that puzzle me. For example, I asked myself why in the Carter Oboe Quarter oboe part measure 252 there are downward stems against the normal rule and contradicting the previous note and creating issues with the slur; and why does the beam slant slightly upward? In measure 258 why upward stems on first beat? There are mostly down stem notes in the group and also in the groups around it. This too creates other issues with slurring.

Ives, measusre 85 cello, third beat. Why are the beams straight? Yet on first beat they slant down against the motion of the melody. Here they might be straight as a compromise.

I am still unconvinced that a deep enough analysis has been made to create a program that allows a computer to do a good job of beaming without a lot of adult supervision.

Just wanted to revive this thread with a curious example from Slovenian engraver Gal Hartman. Personally, I find these opaque beams quite attractive, but I've never seen them in anyone else's work.
They also involve a ridiculous amount of extra work in music featuring a lot of beamed 16th notes or smaller.

What do you guys think?

How interesting! I see a lot in favor of it and nothing against it, at least from the performer's point of view. And one would think that the computer program should do the work rather than the engraver. It certainly could simplify some issues regarding beam angles.

(The slur could use some work, however. (-: )

The aim with beams is to enhance the experience of the eye following the contour of the notes and to avoid ugly white wedges where a beam intersects a stem line or a black wedge where a beam barely touches a line so the line makes it look thicker. 3 or 4 beams are difficult to angle well when they lie in the staff. There is a threshold at which the angle of the note contour is so steep that we no longer need to play with minute adjustments of angles, but can boldly angle them across the staff without causing wedges, as in the Gal Hartman example. He has however cheated a little by removing the staff lines where they might be ugly. this is not possible in Finale or Sibelius, but could be achieved by exporting to illustrator.

It is possible to remove the staff lines in F with the Pettersson beams plugin.