Grand staff hairpins/dynamics w/ cross-staff beaming

[MichelRE]

Just in case it helps, when placing hairpins I never cross stems.

Felipe

the image you posted has the hairpins crossing stems.
did you mean beams? (stems are the vertical lines, beams are the horizontal/diagonal ones)

[Felipe Copaja]

I meant stems, ok, the hairpins do cross them, but are cut so lines don't intersect.

[Anders Hedelin]

I meant stems, ok, the hairpins do cross them, but are cut so lines don't intersect.

I don't know of a rule saying that hairpins may not intersect stems, or staves, which they often have to do in keyboard and harp writing. In this case the alternatives are not too convincing: above or below the two staves would place them rather far from the music.

I don't think there's a need for cutting the hairpins. If anything, the rather unusual look could be distracting.

[MichelRE]

Anders, there's no "rule" as far as I know, but there are simply instances in my score where the placement of hairpins becomes clunky when there are lots of cross-staff beaming and stems.

@John Ruggero earlier in this thread posted an excellent sample from some Ravel that had lots of hairpins going through staves and whatnot.

[OCTO]

Just in case it helps, when placing hairpins I never cross stems.

Felipe

Quite a of job in a vector editor, I would just put the hairpins above.

[MichelRE]

Quite a of job in a vector editor, I would just put the hairpins above.

I believe Dorico has an option for doing this automatically (only for stems).

[NeeraWM]

Just in case it helps, when placing hairpins I never cross stems.

Felipe

This is beautiful!
Great job!

[NeeraWM]

Quite a of job in a vector editor, I would just put the hairpins above.

Naaa... in Sibelius, just import a white graphic and play with layers!

[John Ruggero]

I found Felipe's version less distracting than many maskings, but, alluding to what Anders said, I wonder if there might actually be a sort of "rule" about this: straight lines may only intersect straight lines. So a hairpin may intersect a staff or bar line, stem, etc. but should avoid cutting through or be masked for a dynamic sign, beam, slur etc. Not so sure about slurs. There might be cases of s-shaped slurs that require the hairpin to cut through.

[OCTO]

what Anders said, I wonder if there might actually be a sort of "rule" about this: straight lines may only intersect straight lines.

I would agree with that. Remember, a lot of "notation" is actually "a graphical representation of values that must be percept as fast and accurate as possible", thus crossing over a slur might make it less legible. My opinion. Slurs, in fact, do cross the staff lines very often, very rarely stems (as ties) and never beams.