Voices can switch automatically between the top and the bottom staff. The syntax for this is
\autochange Staff \context Voice { ...music... }The two staffs of the piano staff must be named
up
and
down
.
The autochanger switches on basis of pitch (central C is the turning point), and it looks ahead skipping over rests to switch in advance. Here is a practical example:
\score { \notes \context PianoStaff << \context Staff = "up" { \autochange Staff \context Voice = VA << \relative c' { g4 a b c d r4 a g } >> } \context Staff = "down" { \clef bass s1*2 } >> }
In this example, spacer rests are used to prevent the bottom staff from terminating too soon.
The staff switches often do not end up in optimal places. For high quality output, staff switches should be specified manually.
This page is for LilyPond-2.0.0 (stable-branch).