Summary
| Feature | Toolbar | Icon |
|---|---|---|
| Custom automatic beaming | Note |  |
| Force beam | Note |  |
| Force un-beam | Note |  |
What is a beam?
A beam is a horizontal or diagonal line used to connect multiple consecutive notes to indicate rhythmic grouping. By default on Flat, we automatically beam the notes by beat. That’s something you can easily customize by changing the automatic beaming policy, or manually beam or un-beam notes.
Custom automatic beaming (Premium feature)
If you don’t want to manually set the beams of the notes, you can set your own automatic beaming rules that will be applied to the complete sheet music or to a specific section of the score by selecting the notes.
Some examples:
- In 4/4, by default Flat uses the “1 + 1 + 1 + 1” beaming rule, which means the notes are beamed by beat. If you change to “2 + 2”, the eighth notes will be beamed by 4 (so two beats).
- In 6/8, the most common notation is to group the eighth by 3 (3 + 3), or 2 (2 + 2 + 2).
Here is a quick demo in 6/8 of changing the beaming rule from 3 + 3 + 3 to 2 + 2, then setting a custom rule to 1 + 3 + 2.
Manual notes beaming (Free feature)
Alternatively to the automatic beaming, you can force to beam or un-beam notes. When you select a single note, the settings will apply to the selected note and the next one. You can also quickly beam multiple notes together by selecting them, then clicking on Force beam.
