Cross staff beaming

Is there an easy way to create cross staff beaming (e.g. in a piano score) with the beam in between the staves and the stem(s) on the opposite side of the notehead? This example was created in Finale using the shortcut Alt-down arrow and imported into Dorico via XML.
cross staff.tiff (11.5 KB)

Yes, easy: type the notes in on the right-hand staff, then when you have entered a note you want to be crossed to the staff below, hit M. Hit N to cross to the staff above. To reset a selected note back to its home staff, use the menus: Edit > Cross Staff > Reset to Original Staff.

That’s fine when I’m entering notes, but what if I need to change existing notes? If I highlight a note and press M, it moves the notehead to the staff below and it lengthens the stem but it doesn’t alter the beaming as I described above.

In Write mode, select the beam and then Edit/Stem/Force Centred Beam.

Thanks, Knut. I wouldn’t have thought to look there.

To continue this interesting discussion, is there a way to join the beams between staves in such a way as to remove unnecessary rests? I’m using the excellent notation guide by Elaine Gould, “Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation”, and she suggests the following notation (a and b in the first attachment):
Screen Shot 2017-12-25 at 16.45.37.jpg
My current problem looks more like the example no-go (d) in the first attachment:
Screen Shot 2017-12-25 at 16.51.29.png
I’ve tried using “force center beam”, as described in a comment above, but that only resulted in what you see in the second attachment, separate beams with all the rests between notes. In Gould’s examples, she shows that it is acceptable and more readable in the (a) and (b) examples if it is to be played as a single passage, with beams joined either in the center or above/below the staves, and no rests. Is this do-able in Dorico?

This is very easy. Doesn’t Daniel’s earlier post help? Type all the notes in on one staff and move some of them later by selecting them and pressing M or N.

Yes, but as a commenter above noted, that’s fine if you’re typing in the notes. These parts were imported as an xml from Cubase, the notes are all there, and it would be enormously tedious to re-type everything in.

You could try experimenting with filters, filtering just notes (in the bottom stave) and pasting them into the voice that is already used in the top stave. Not sure whether it’ll work, and having chord input turned on might make a difference (really!).

Otherwise it’s going to be retyping.

Leo is right, that’s how you can do it. Pretty fast.
I was just making a fancy gif to show how to do it:
cross staff.gif

Wow, that’s awesome, you cats are the coolest. I’ll give it a shot…if only it’s as easy as the giff makes it look!

Okay, it works fine, but for one caveat. The 16th rest in the upper stave (they’re both bass clef) should be in the lower, as it’s a rest between those two chords down below.
Screen Shot 2017-12-25 at 19.59.53.png
If there’s any way to move that 1st rest to the lower stave (as it is at the end of the bar) I’ll be a happy camper.

If I’m not mistaken this rest is an implicit one. That means it doesn’t really exist… and you can’t move it to the other staff. You need to input an explicit rest at this position. Activate the caret, select the duration, activate the rest button in the left hand panel and type any ‘pitch letter’ (a, b, c… g). The newly created rest looks just as before, but it’s now an explicit one and can be moved just like any other note.
I hope it helps!

Edit: Alternatively, move the whole group to the lower staff and do the cross staff thing the other way around.

We cats are many things, but “the coolest” is probably not one of them. We’re on an engraving forum on Christmas Day (while playing Scrabble with the girlfriend, at least in my case) :wink:

Great advice, folks. I first removed the 16th rest on the upper stave, and entered a new one there, but found I couldn’t move it (as you do notes? It wouldn’t budge, also with alt + up/down arrows). So I erased that one, and added a new rest in the right place on the lower stave, and that worked fine. Now I have the bar as I wanted it:
Screen Shot 2017-12-25 at 20.53.17.png

I couldn’t help but chuckle with the same thought myself. Just goes to show how dedicated to “the cause” we really are :unamused:

When I read that yesterday, it turns out I was playing Scrabble with my girlfriend too :joy:

Heh… why would an engraving forum not be the coolest place on Christmas day?
:wink:
Merry Christmas to all the cool cats here!