Logic Pro Bug in cross-staff beaming combined with clef changes?

[DouglasScott]

I have used the very useful information here to add cross-staff beaming to a 2-staff piano part. Today though I ran into what seems like a bug. I have a measure in which I split the part between the staves and beamed them for clarity, and at this point I am partway through moving the notes to the lower staff:

Because most of the notes are above the bass clef, I added a treble clef as shown - but it is ignored! If I click on the notes in the left hand, I get C3 and F1, respectively. I then tried to move the treble clef to a better location after the C2-natural in the left hand - but Logic will not allow me to place the clef *anywhere else* in the bar!
Is this some odd order-of-operations issue, or just a bug?
Closely related to this is that if I select the F4 and C#4 in the third beat and use the command to move them to the staff below, nothing happens.
Thoughts?

Much appreciated!

 

[DouglasScott]

Updates:
1) I now understand that if I hide the LH staff rests in the Staff Style, I can place my own quarter-note rest above, and then the clef change after that. BUT, the clef does nothing (the notes following it do not change location).
2) I see that for the third beat, the notes are *already* cross-beamed. The problem here is the same as (1) - treble clef ignored.

As a retired programmer, I would guess this is because the cross-beamed notes "belong" to the RH staff, and the LH clefs are therefor ignored.

 

[DouglasScott]

This was the result of choosing to move the selected notes to the staff below the voice. You can see that the lower staff is set to treble clef, but the notes are mapped in as if that staff were still in bass clef.

 

[Doug Zangar]

I did a quick test - I had no problem adding a treble clef in the left hand staff, and the notes relocated correctly (Logic 11.0.1). However, when I go through the process you linked to, I get the same ignoring of the treble clef - or any clef for that matter. My guess is the coding is not set up for this, it expects notes of the left hand to be lower.
- Doug

 

[DouglasScott]

This issue forced me to give up on Logic as my score-generating program and move to another.

 

[Doug Zangar]

Understood - the Score Editor is good, but lacks some deep features. This looks like one of them.

 

[Tayto]

Hi.
It's possible but notes must initially be entered into or belong to the stave where the clef change occurs and then cross from there*.

You are correct in post #2 above: staves are unaware of one another's contents in things like: clef changes (as in this example), accidentals, rests etc. so as far as cross-staff notation goes in logic, best to think of it like pencil and paper where you have to manually check and notate accidentals e.g. see screenshot below where in order to facilitate clef change in lower stave**, notes were initially entered in that stave: while the music just consists of repeated C sharps, lower stave will require missing accidentals to be added (i.e. 'forced') manually…

(* Major tip: use staff style with rests set to "-Full" so wouldn't even need to chop region to change staff style in order to hide rests. Only downside is that elsewhere, whole bar rests would need to be added manually to empty bars - see screenshot.
** although less crucial, currently, non-mid-measure clef changes are displayed after the bar which as well as looking bad, also cause misalignment if there is a simultaneous time and/or key signature change)

 

[Tayto]

However, some situations may require the 'chop region/edit staff style' method. This is the 'Swiss-army-knife' workaround for many Logic issues BUT problems arise when score items span the region break e.g. tied notes (when region cut at barline) or mid-note (sometimes in a polyphonic staff when region cut mid-bar), 8ve higher/lower lines, slurs etc. Usually all can be achieved using workarounds but some situations might require muting display notes and using instead hidden playback notes, so at a certain point it may seem not worth the trouble…

…So this is a MAJOR candidate for a score editor feature request i.e. the ability for successive regions to "see into" and effect one another e.g. should be possible for a score item (like a tied-note, 8ve line, slur etc.) to extend into the following region and behave/appear correctly in score. The same goes for cross staff awareness for things like accidentals, clef changes etc.