Arpege
Music

French

Europe (English)

Pianistic notation: cross staff beaming

In piano scores, it is frequent to use the 2 clefs (G and F) to write the playing of a single musical passage. Technically, this means that the same rhythmic voice (which is normally written on one staff) will be written over 2 staves. Here are some examples:

In these measures, using two staves is done to make it easier to read the notes with the 2 clefs. The lower notes would have been difficult to read in the G clef. But these measures only include one rhythmic voice (as Pizzicato defines the rhythmic voice).

To write this type of measures with Pizzicato, you need to understand that the notes always belong to one of the two staves. Here we have chosen the upper staff to place the notes, but it could have been the lower staff also. It is better to use the staff which contains most of the notes.

Once a note is written in a staff, you can drag it to the other staff, but this is only a graphic effect: the note always belongs to its original staff. It means that the justification of the rhythmic voices is still made on the basis of the content of the original measure.

For more details, please see the page http://www.arpegemusic.com/manual30/EN325.htm