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LilyPond's default beaming in cut time (2/2) puts a beam over all notes in one beat, hence 8 sixteenth notes beamed together. I know how to command a local group to beam in groups of four, but am having no luck setting the various override commands , e.g.,

\set Timing.baseMoment 
  \set Timing.beatStructure 
  \set Timing.beamExceptions

to get what I want. Here is an example of default vs. desired output.

Edit Stupid me: because I'm using \NewGrandStaff I need to apply something like @Lazy's answer to both staves! That'll teach me to provide a proper code snippet in the first place.

"bad" beaming

"good" beaming

My only preamble (other than some unrelated formatting) is \time 2/2 .

Basically, I want the time signature to be shown as 2/2 (or the "Cut" symbol) but the notes to be handled pretty much the way the 4/4 time defaults are.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

AlexJ’s reply gives you a solution to have 2/2 behave like a 4/4. But if you only want to change behaviour for 16th note beaming you can set a beaming exception for this case:

{
  \time 2/2
  c'16 d' e' f' g' a' b' c''
  \set Timing.beamExceptions = \beamExceptions {
    16[ 16 16 16] 16[ 16 16 16] 16[ 16 16 16] 16[ 16 16 16] |
  }
  d''16 c'' b' a' g' f' d' c'
}
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  • Well dang: I had tried this and failed, but mea culpa: I had set up NewGrandStaff and turns out I need to set \beamExceptions for both voices! If I only set it for one voice, it won't take effect. Commented Apr 10 at 14:01
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This is documented in section 1.2.4 of the Notation manual. Slightly adapted for your example:

\version "2.24.4"

\score {
    <<
    { \time 2/2
    \set Timing.baseMoment = #(ly:make-moment 1/4)
    \set Timing.beatStructure = 1,1,1,1
    \relative c'' { c8 c'4 b16 a g fis a g fis e d c }
    }
    >>
}
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1
  • 1
    As an addendum, if you really just want 4/4 but with a 2/2 time signature you can look up to answer to this question of mine here: music.stackexchange.com/questions/132036/… Commented Apr 10 at 12:50

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