Piano staff notation with both hands in 1 staff

[eegee]

Hi - I’m trying to transcribe a piece into Dorico that has this kind of notation for piano. It’s not clear to me what the notation with stems in both directions means - does this mean to switch hands?

Depending on the answer to the first question, could I get some tips on how to duplicate this into Dorico? I’ve played with making it a second voice, but then I still don’t get the double stem notes. Or is this just something I should force via Engrave mode?

Thanks,
Eric

[MarcLarcher]

Dear Eric,
The second voice is the way. Make sure it’s a downstem voice (Downstem voice 1 should be perfect). Then the notes should overlap and you should get that “double stem note” appearance. Not sure what it means, though

[Lillie_Harris]

If you see two noteheads next to each other, one for each voice, look in Notation Options (Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-N) > Voices, there you’ll find default per-flow options for how notes in different voices should be positioned relative to each other, including when the notehead can be shared.

[eegee]

Thank you for the tips. I’m able to duplicate this transcription using some voice magic as suggested. The only thing I can’t get to work is removing the rests from the bottom starff in the piano grand staff as shown in my attachment. It seems like unusual notation anyways. This is from the John Williams Signature Score for Jurassic Park around measure 49 if anybody is interested.

Thanks,
Eric

[Rob_Tuley]

If you put the left hand notes on the bottom staff and then cross-staff them to the top staff (shortcut N) you won’t get bar rests on the bottom staff.

Use Edit / Remove Rests to get rid of the shorter rests.

[Romanos]

eegee, to answer your first question, yes/no. This particular example is a bit vague to me. Sometimes this style of notation is indeed used to indicate which hand takes which parts of a given run although stems aren’t typically duplicated—usually the stems are just flipped or the notes are cross stave; other times, as in the second bar, a single down stemmed note here or there indicates where the primary melody notes are so they can be brought out of the texture, regardless of which hand plays the note. This particular example is difficult to decipher without knowing more about the part.

[eegee]

@Romanos401

eegee, to answer your first question, yes/no. This particular example is a bit vague to me. Sometimes this style of notation is indeed used to indicate which hand takes which parts of a given run although stems aren’t typically duplicated—usually the stems are just flipped or the notes are cross stave; other times, as in the second bar, a single down stemmed note here or there indicates where the primary melody notes are so they can be brought out of the texture, regardless of which hand plays the note. This particular example is difficult to decipher without knowing more about the part.

Thanks - It’s good to know that it is indeed vague and not just something I had never learned.

@Rob Tuley

If you put the left hand notes on the bottom staff and then cross-staff them to the top staff (shortcut N) you won’t get bar rests on the bottom staff.

Use Edit / Remove Rests to get rid of the shorter rests.

This was helpful - thank you!