Re: Cross Staff Beaming

[Mark Polesky]

Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

>   I'm trying to do some cross-staff beams in the middle of a piano staff. 
> They seem to work pretty well, but I think the beaming is wrong.
> 
> In beat 2, the 6-tuplet starts in the right-hand.  I don't have the 
> Kurt Stone book on modern notation in front of me, but if I remember 
> correctly, the staff of the first note sets the reference for the beams. 
> That would mean the a-sharp 32nd-note should connect at the bottom beam, 
> not the top one.  

No, that's wrong. But I admit, these rules are sometimes confusing
(I had to open the Stone book to make sure). And as strange as
these beams might look, LilyPond gets them right. One thing Stone
is clear about is that the priority is to avoid what he calls "beam
corners" (exposed right-angles). Ideally a beam group has only two
beam corners (the unavoidable ones at the beginning and end). If
you connect said A-sharp 32-note to the lowest beam of the 6-tuplet
you'd get a beam corner at the top-right of the 6-tuplet.

And the last beat sure looks weird, but some note-patterns are
simply incorrigible WRT beaming*, and I think that's the case here.
You could try breaking the last beat into two beam groups, and/or
adding \set stemRightBeamCount = #1 just before the last note of
each triplet, or you could just lean back with the smug feeling
that you write music that challenges the rules of notation...

*see the attached example from Chopin's prelude Op.28 no.1.

Hope this helps.
- Mark

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