NOTION Music Forum

Why Stems are so rebel? Am I doing something wrong?

I am writing for harp in an orchestral piece, and I was expecting to use the stem direction tool to put some groups of notes up and some down, which is usually how you tell left from right hand easily. (Another way would be to put left and right hands in different staves, which isn't very nice with Notion because it doesn't have the cross-staff thing).

The problem is, I can't have stems my way. They only obbey me if they are not beamed together, even if every note in the beamed group has the same direction.



See this example, it's the same measure but I 'cutted out' all the beams. In the first measure, stems are not beamed but they point the right direction. In the second measure, once beamed, they do as they want.

Here's the notion file:

Hi Emilio,

Here's a suggestion that will allow you to avoid the bugs in the up-stem/down-stem area of Notion:
Enter all up-stem notes in Layer 1 and all down-stem notes in Layer 2. In each layer, add the appropriate rest when the other layer is active. In your example, enter quarter rests on beat 1 and 3 for the up-stem notes in Layer 1; and quarter rests on 2 and 4 for the down-stem notes in Layer 2.

Afterwards, hide the rests (right-click a note head, select Notes > Up-stem or Down-stem as appropriate).

Below is a picture of the result, and also a copy of your original file, with my addition.

Best wishes,
Thorrild

Thank you very, very much Thorrild! this will be very useful!