The other solution (also mentioned by Gould a few pages further along) is to widen the spacing of the beams as already done for 64ths. That or one of the two other valid angles (horizontal or full-staff-space). Half-space slanted multiple-beams without running into the beam-in-space issue are in any case only possible outside the stave or if the beams are spaced further apart (1/2 space gap between each instead of the standard 1/4).
Cheers, Aleksa Am Fr., 19. Dez. 2025 um 19:12 Uhr schrieb Carl Sorensen < [email protected]>: > > > On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 1:42 PM Luise Flesch <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Hi Aleksa! Thanks for the answer :) >> >> I've been digging into everything (and I MEAN everything. I think the >> only place I didn't look for information was in the freaking subreddit) >> lilypond online to see if there was anything I could do, and I think I've >> found the issue. See this regtest (beam-quant-32nd.ly): >> [image: image.png] >> "Stem lengths take precedence over beam quants" (I think I understand >> what beam quanting is? The quants are like, the points of the staff that >> the beam ends go on. so forbidden quants are beam ends ending up in the >> middle of a staff space. might be misinterpreting though). So this is on >> *purpose*, to prioritise good stem lengths over good beam slants (and >> indeed, you can see beam ends in staff spaces like at least 3 times in this >> very regtest). Why, I don't heckin know lmao. >> > > I think the point of this regtest is to demonstrate that for triply-beamed > stems, lilypond chooses to put beams in bad locations in order to avoid a > worse problem of stems that go too far outside of the staff. This is > showing a design decision. I'm not saying it's a proper decision, but that > it is a design decision. Given that, I think the design needs to be > changed to solve the problem you are having. > > I have done some looking in old versions. This same regtest in lilypond > 2.2 has no beams end in spaces, as far as I can see. > > https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.2/input/regression/out-www/collated-files.html > > Perhaps we missed a change in a regtest a LONG time ago and need to fix a > bug that was introduced some time after 2.2. Between 2.2 and 2.4, the > beaming in the last pair of measure 2 changed from horizontal to 1/2 staff > space, and that ended up with a beam in the center of a space. > > Or perhaps some of the stem lengths in 2.2 that prevent unallowed 32nd > beam positions are worse than having the beams end in the spaces. > > Note that beam-quanting-horizontal shows that lilypond respects Gould's > rules when beams are horizontal. When the slope between two notes is a > second (one half staff space), then it's impossible to follow Gould's rules > with a beam that reflects the slope between the heads. It must either be a > horizontal beam, or a full-staff-space slanted beam to maintain Gould's > rules. > > It should be possible to bisect if needed and find the change that shifted > from horizontal to half-space-slanted beams between 2.2 and 2.4 > > HTH, > > Carl > >>
