Question about beaming in LilyPond

Question

I've recently installed LilyPond and Denomo and found them to be great tools. However I can not seem to learn how to make a beaming pattern like this:

This is the bar in Denemo gui:

My LilyPond code:

\stemUp g'[ \stemDown  c''16 d'' e''8 \stemUp  c'8]~  c'16[ bes16 a g] a8 f'~ \AutoBarline

The problem is that this comes out:

The 16th note beam collides with the note heads. I am referring to the C and D, the 2nd and 3rd notes into the bar.

How would one draw the 16th note beam from under the main connecting beam, going away from the note heads toward the bottom of the staff, like as in the first picture?

Answer 1

You could split the lilypond code into two parts that you combine using \partcombine, for example like this:

\stemUp \partcombine { g'8[ \stemDown \set stemLeftBeamCount = #1 c''16] s16 s4 } { s8 \stemDown c''16[ \set stemRightBeamCount = #1 d'' e''8 \stemUp c'8]~ } c'16[ bes16 a g]  a8 f'

I used stemLeftBeamCount and stemRightBeamCount to ensure that the double beams for the 16th notes are only drawn between these.

The result would look like this:

Maybe the appearance can be improved further, but at least it looks much better than the original.

Answer 2

OP asked this question on the Lilypond-User mailing list; the thread can be found here.

The solution given is

\version "2.19.81"

line = \relative c'' {
  \stemUp
  g8[
  \stemDown
  \once \override Stem.beaming = #'((0) . (-1 0))
  c16
  \once \override Stem.beaming = #'((-1 0) . (0))
  d
  e8
  \stemUp
  c,]
}

\score {
  \new Staff \line
  \layout { }
}

Although LilyPond does provide an error message—warning: no viable initial configuration found: may not find good beam slope—the code nevertheless compiles.

As for the curvature of the beam in the original example, this is something that (in my understanding) is not currently a possibility in LilyPond.

Lastly, whether this is an ideal way to typeset this excerpt is still up for debate.