(I think the score was published when Gould, the notation theorist behind many choices in Dorico, worked at Chester; may we call it the British way? ).
To be fair, Gould has never taken a stance on tail collision to my knowledge - probably because this is not really a legibility concern, but an aesthetic one. From Behind Bars:
The tail of a down-stemmed note may [my emphasis] curve as far as to touch the notehead (p. 15)
Opinion upcoming:
Tails are one of the most nightmare-inducing things to design for a notation font (I know this in spite of not having designed one myself). You may develop a nice design, but then you realize that it won’t work with dots or tremolo marks, or ledger lines, or even just the balance between up- and down-stems, or that it puts requirements on stem lengths that collide with articulations etc. In the end, it’s one of the aspects of notation fonts that probably requires most compromise.
I like how Bravura has turned out. I’m quite sure SCORE - which isn’t exactly plate-engraving, but whose developer very much obsessed about these details, had “colliding” down-stem tails too. And hence, so does MuseScore’s new Leland.
All that said, the “collision” isn’t really a feature of Bravura, but of Dorico, I think. Since SMuFL doesn’t dictate stem length. At least I have an internal engraving tool that uses Bravura, and doesn’t collide (but it’s relatively limited and not really obsessed with details (as you can easily tell from the position of the “8”), and may actually be using Bravura incorrectly - that’s why it’s internal).
As for “Comic Sans” (right…), the thin fonts of the past 20+ years are much more of a trend/“fad” than more substantial notation aesthetics. It’ll likely die out just as the recent over-reliance on thin/light fonts in type-setting.
I think again this is just the difference between the “Default” noteheads and the “Larger” noteheads (which Dorico uses by default).
This is Dorico factory defaults for everything apart from the noteheads on the top staff. Those are the “Default” noteheads, and despite their name I had to click some buttons in order to persuade Dorico to use them
(Off topic) Wow, I’ve never actually compared my output 1:1 to Dorico’s. So, the slightly too low “8” doesn’t look like a bug on my end; the small gap between stem-head-line on the c might be, though. Is the “larger noteheads” a recent change? Because I did feel my Dorico scores didn’t look subjectively quite as good as expected, when compared to the early example images when Dorico was first released. Must say I prefer the “default noteheads” (which aren’t default). Not for the lack of collision with tails, but just in general… But for now, I’m more focused on getting a lot of music into Dorico than adjusting the details (still waiting to upgrade to Pro anyway, so have no real engraving options for now).
No, Larger Noteheads have been the default since v1.0 (or presumably earlier, but I wasn’t privy to the pre-release versions). If you have Pro you can switch over in Engraving Options. You can’t do that from within Elements, I’m afraid.
I guess it’s another case of looking too long at specific editions, or in this case, the output of my own app, which is obviously developed to my tastes - so much so that maybe I confuse it with what Dorico actually outputs, because it still has the similarity of using Bravura. When starting to look at the details, rather than just inputting notes, I also suddenly find Dorico’s key signature spacing too wide. Pro is certainly coming up - been missing ossia staffs etc. for months now. But since music isn’t really my profession, I’m being cheap for as long as possible.
Those who have read the Scoring Notes article about making the Sebastian font for Dorico will know that ‘nicely podgy’ quaver flags that don’t touch were one of the things I look for in a music font.
So I understand the request. I imagine that most of us have a few things we really like in a music font; a few things we can’t stand; and the rest is just … Meh OK.
Others will comment as my mother-in-law did: “But I can’t see any difference between this and other music.”
You can change the offset of the flag-below via Music Symbols in Engrave Mode :
Even I developed Soli & Tutti music fonts but Bravura is still one of my favorite engraving music font. I mostly alternate in between Bravura and Tutti.
Pro is certainly coming up - been missing ossia staffs etc. for months now. But since music isn’t really my profession, I’m being cheap for as long as possible.
