Dear Carolyn,
That's great. You can shorten the stems of unbeamed notes by modifying
Stem.length, like this:
\version "2.26.0"
\relative e'' {
e8 r8
\override Stem.length = #5
e8
}
-William
On 7/1/26 6:53 PM, Carolyn Beeton wrote:
Thank you. That gives me something to play with for the beamed eights. Still
haven’t figured out how to shorten the unbeamed eighth.
Carolyn
On Jul 1, 2026, at 4:28 PM, William Rehwinkel <[email protected]>
wrote:
Dear Carolyn,
It seems that Stem.details.beamed-lengths gets overridden by other spacing
rules in some way. You can try manually setting the position of the beam like
this:
\version "2.26.0"
\relative d'' {
\time 6/8
d8 b cis
\override Beam.positions = #'(-1 . -1.3)
d b cis
}
Does this work for you?
-William
On 7/1/26 3:54 PM, Carolyn Beeton wrote:
I am trying to shorten the stem length for a couple of notes (because there is
another voice underneath, from the other staff) to reproduce this music.
This snippet shows the default rendering, and then I’m trying to shorten and
revert the stem length, but nothing changes. This is only the one voice, but I
can’t shorten the stems even in this simple example.
I have been able to make the stems long, but not short.
What am I doing wrong, and how can I achieve this?
Thanks,
Carolyn
\version "2.24"
\include "english.ly"
shortBeams = { % none of this works
\override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(0.5)
\override Stem.details.beamed-minimum-free-lengths = #'(0.5)
\override Stem.details.beamed-exteme-minimum-free-lengths = #'(0.6)
\override Stem.details.stem-shorten = #'(0.5)
}
\relative c'
{
\time 6/8
e'4^"default" d8 cs4 d8 | d b cs d e8 e8 | d4 c8 b4 c8 ~ | 8 a b ~ 8 d c
\section
e4 d8 cs4 \shortBeams d8^"short" | d b cs \revert Stem.details.beamed-lengths
d^"revert" e8 e8 |
d4 c8 b4 c8 ~ | \shortBeams 8^"short" a b ~ \revert
Stem.details.beamed-lengths 8 d c
}
