Beam grouping according to meters

Dorico Pro has default beaming settings for common time signatures, based on general conventions and your chosen settings. For example, although the time signatures of 3/4 and 6/8 contain the same number of beats, they imply different meters and so are beamed differently. In 3/4, phrases of eighth notes are beamed together within each bar and phrases of other durations are beamed in quarter notes (crotchets) by default, but in 6/8, phrases are beamed in dotted quarter notes.

Dorico Pro groups and beams notes in irregular time signatures, such as 5/8 or 7/8, according to the most common practices for those time signatures.

For situations where you want to control the beat grouping in more detail, you can input a custom time signature with an explicit rhythmic subdivision. Dorico Pro then automatically beams phrases according to this subdivision. For example, entering [7]/8 into the time signatures popover means all seven eighth notes (quavers) are beamed together, whereas entering [2+2+3]/8 subdivides the seven eighth notes into two, then two, then three.