Hello, Lilypond’s has rather light beams, i.e. the thickness of a beam and the space between beams is pretty much the same. In some cases such as longer distance to the sheet or bad lighting this makes the score more readable, but in other cases, such as a medium reading distance in good lighting, this makes reading the score very hard, because the whitespace between the Beam lines is perceived by the brain as potentially relevant information. Making the beam heavier will decrease the whitespace, leading to the brain perceiving the whole beam as one piece of information, thus leading to less distraction from the notes. This is especially true for backlighted forms such as a display.
I’ve appended the beginning of Bach BWV 1001, the bottom staff has the standard beam thickness of 0.48ss, while the top staff has a drastically larger beam thickness of 0.55ss. You might notice, that in bad light or in bigger distances, the lower staff is clearer to read, while at normal distance or on screens, the top staff feels much less comfortable to read. So what’s your opinion about that? → Is Lilypond’s default value for beam thickness good, or should it be slightly larger? (0.55 surely is not a good default value, that is too heavy) → Since the best beam thickness depends heavily on the use, alongside with other aspects, should there be some call to load sensible defaults for a certain target? I would love to hear your opinions about that. Regards, Valentin
bach1001.pdf
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