Re: Four piano snippets

[David Kastrup]

Curt <address@hidden> writes:

> I just realized one problem with having cross-stave lines everywhere
> is that it makes crescendos and decrescendos and dynamic markings
> problematic. What a tough nut this is. 
>
> Going off of several of your suggestions and trying to understand
> David Kastrup's point about "cross-voice" (David, I'm not sure I
> followed), here's a revision of the first eight bars. It's complicated
> by the fact that sometimes I actually do alter the tremolo pattern
> when there is a piano note at the same time. How does this look?

I actually think that my suggestion already was in one of your versions
(#4 or so)?

At any rate, the tremolo notation is a significant reduction in visual
complexity, but it forces the stems in one direction.

I'd start the first bar with stems in two directions (with LH and RH as
you did), put LH and RH on the first tremolo, sim. on the second.  When
you have to go back to single notes, _stick_ with one stem direction but
put LH and RH on the first two eighths, sim. on the following.

The problem is that it is too visually jarring to switch from tremolo
(one stem direction) to explicit voicing (up/down stems), but since the
tremolo notation significantly helps, you don't want to forego it.

For staying with the up/down notation, one might want to consider
something like

\new Staff { \clef bass
             \repeat tremolo 4 { <c e>16_[] <g c'>^[] } }

except that the number of warnings is excessive, and one would want the
slopes of the split beam to suggest a connection rather than be
horizontal.  Maybe some of our backend guys can suggest improvements in
case you are interested in pursuing that path.

-- 
David Kastrup