Beam subdivision

[John Ruggero]

Some centered beaming is impossible without curved beams. Some of this can be seen in Bach's MS above. I have to create a shape in the shape designer to handle such cases:

Curved beam.jpeg (111.26 KiB) Viewed 4509 times

[Anders Hedelin]

There's something rather wonderful about those curved beams. I wonder why it was never (as far as I know) done in printed music?

I also had an infatuation with these curved beams and wondered why they weren't used more in printed music. Maybe it's because they simply look more genuine actually written by hand, with all the tiny flaws and irregularities. Printed, all the lines would have a consistent thickness and perfectly streamlined curving, somehow similar to a text font trying to imitate the live strokes of a pen. Artificial spontaneity, you could say.

[John Ruggero]

I agree, Anders. They look much better when done by hand.