7.1 Piano music

Piano staves are two normal staves coupled with a brace. The staves are largely independent, but sometimes voices can cross between the two staves. The same notation is also used for harps and other key instruments. The PianoStaff is especially built to handle this cross-staffing behavior. In this section we discuss the PianoStaff and some other pianistic peculiarities.

• Automatic staff changes
• Manual staff switches
• Pedals
• Staff switch lines
• Cross staff stems

Bugs

Dynamics are not centered, but workarounds do exist. See the “piano centered dynamics” template in Piano templates.

The distance between the two staves is the same for all systems in the score. It is possible to override this per system, but it does require an arcane command incantation. See input/test/piano-staff-distance.ly.