When using cross staff beaming between piano stave the alignment seems to favor the note heads but I would prefer the stems to be equally spaced. This is possible using note spacing in engrave mode but is time consuming. Is there any other way to facilitate this? Thanks.
Thank you Lillie, I would not have thought to look there and that has saved me a lot of work.
There is one problem with this. While it works well for one of the pianos it can cause problems of crunched notes in the other piano. It is less work but still requires editing i.e. bar 3 piano 2.
I think D. considers the system a bit tight… Have you tried adding a note spacing change at the start of the system?
The option to use optical spacing for stems in opposing directions is designed to work when there’s only a single instrument in the layout, which is why it’s off by default in full scores but on in parts. It’s probably still best to use this option when you have a lot of between-staves beams in the layout, since you can fix any distortion that appears in the other piano using the circular note spacing handles (not the square ones) in Engrave mode.
It would be marvellous if, perhaps via the Note Spacing Change dialog, we could switch stem spacing on or off for a selected passage. In an ensemble work that includes 2-stave instruments it would make sense in cross-stave passages to have stem spacing on where no other rhythms would get distorted, but off otherwise.
Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll make a note of it.
I have discovered that using both square and circle handles for an ‘out of place’ note and the arrow buttons works well.