How to cross-staff beam different length notes in a chord.

[Arle Lommel]

Hello all,

Thanks for those of you who tried to help me with some choral music issues a few weeks ago. I've encountered a new problem where I'm hoping someone might have a suggestion that is useful.

I am working with a nineteenth century piece by Gottschalk. It has frequent passages like this:

I'm using Lilypond 2.16.0 and am looking for how to handle the cross staff beaming in the chord in the first beat where the top note is a 2 and the others are 4s. 

My minimal example is this:

top = { \change Staff = "top" }

bottom = { \change Staff = "bottom" }

staffPiano = \new PianoStaff {

\set PianoStaff.instrumentName = #"Piano"

\time 3/4

<<

\context Staff = "top" { 

\clef treble

\key b \major

\relative c' {

<< { \stemUp fis2 } \\ { \bottom \stemUp  \once \override Stem #'cross-staff = ##t \once \override Stem #'length = #25 \once \override NoteColumn #'ignore-collision = ##t <fis, b dis>4^"   Ben marcato e sostenuto il canto" \top \stemNeutral <fis'' b dis>8_"m.g." b,8\rest <cisis, gis'>4 } \\ { \tiny d'''8\rest \ottava #1 \stemUp dis32 fis32 dis32 fis,32 \ottava #0 b4\rest fis4\rest | } >> |

}

}

\context Staff = "bottom" { 

\clef bass

\key b \major

\relative c, {

\stemDown <b b'>2^\p <eis' b'>4 |

}

}

>>

}

Which mostly works

However, the stems are slightly misaligned. Not a huge deal, but it looks a bit sloppy.

Any better way to handle this?

These chords with different note lengths are terribly common in this piece, so I will run into this more than once.

Bes regards,

-Arle