space between pianostaves

[Martin Tarenskeen]

Hi,

I'm trying to re-produce an existing piece of pianomusic score using 
Lilypond. A very good learning experience! Dynamics, expression marks, 
slurs, arpeggios, polyphony, cross-staff beaming: I need it all.

I have now completed the basic score, using mostly standard Lilypond 
commands. It now looks OK, but not great. I will have to do some tweaking, 
which means diving deeply into the great but many pages Lilypond manuals. 
I don't mind that, but it would still be nice to have some help with the 
following questions:

1. My score has markups above the RH staff, and pedal signs below the LH 
staff. It also has high and low notes with ledger lines above and below 
the staff. Readability could be improved if I could make more space 
between the pianostaves, globally for the complete score , but I want to 
keep the distance inside the pianostaff between the RH staff and the LH 
staff unchanged. How to do this ?

2. I have a Dynamics context for piano-centered-dynamics, and I like 
working with this new context better than the template from 2.12.x (I'm 
using Lilypond 2.13.19 now). But the default result is not what I want 
yet: I already found a way to shift all dynamic signs a little bit to the 
right. (hopefully this will not be necessary anymore in a future Lilypond 
version). But there is another problem remaining. I have put in the 
Dynamics context also dynamic marks (\f, \p, \< etc.) and markups like 
"rit." , "legato" , "poco a poco". How I can I force these markups to be 
placed centered just like the dynamics marks? It looks really ugly like I 
have it now. (Let me know if you need a small example)

--

Martin