A short request: the discussion of different SMuFL fonts. My own use of music fonts since moving to Dorico in 2018 has mostly been confined to Bravura, albeit with a lot of small modifications and sometimes swapping clefs. I’ve used November for one or two projects, but not in the past few years (I never did care for the p glyph, haha). I’ve used Sebastian for a big project last year, and I’m doing a second related project starting in a few months, also with Sebastian.
I know there have been quite a few new SMuFL fonts designed over the past few years, many of them by @Nordine. I also know about a few more under development that are very promising. But I would love to hear a discussion of SMuFL fonts that others have used, and why. I feel like when I choose a font, I often can’t describe why it’s the perfect fit… it just seems right.
I’m curious to hear what others have done, either in developing a house style (maybe nobody wants to share their secrets…) or fitting the needs of a specific project, or composer, or style. It would also be helpful to hear others describe the characteristics of certain music fonts, which I realize is subjective. Thanks in advance!
I had a look at other fonts but so far I did not have the idea they fit better for my needs. I like some aspects of November, a kind of more elegant. I’m curious what others with more knowledge will bring in here.
A recent project I did for a client, they wanted a German part-singing book recreated into English. They didn’t like Bravura. When I switched to Sebastian and changed almost nothing else, instantly they loved it. They aren’t musicains, by the way…
I did a little SMuFL font comparison a couple of years ago in this thread, if anyone wants to compare specific glyphs. Not sure if any of those have been updated since then, or how many new ones are available. I think all of the fonts I compared were free except for November 2, so I know @Nordinehas a LOT more commercially available.
ha! I think that maybe no masterchef would want to share his secrets and tips about preparing his dishes.
During the covid period, I remember I have started designing lot of fonts, I remember I have spent about 8 hours a day as we were prohibited from teaching music and giging. Creativity has no limit when you’re a gifted person.
Choosing the right font can differ from one to another, depending of one’s taste and the impression that the font make. You might prefer Sebastian font for a given project while somebody else might prefer maybe just Bravura or Finale Maestro.
I use my own python scripts with FL5 & FL8 and Ai, starting from scratch, I could generate for example the same glyph 4 times or even more times with different shapes, different curves, different nodes, but they are all 4 quadruplet babies.
That is mainly the reason why I use mostly Finale Maestro, it has such a beautiful flag! And I do not want my score too black (but I only do grand-staff keyboard stuff). November2 is in my bag also, but I am a little put off by the clefs and also I do not like the dynamics (p, mp, mf etc).
Do not mind sharing “my secret”: default music font is Finale Maestro and default text font is Swift. Difficult to say exactly why, but I like it that way, feel free to comment!
IMO the smaller “default” noteheads go better with this kind of very tight spacing and fine-lined music glyphs. The “larger” noteheads (Dorico’s actual default) are more suited to the heavy appearance of Bravura and the rather wide default note spacing (4).
Elbsound has a really handy website that allows one very quickly to “A/B” different fonts (though the pop-up menu doesn’t specify which are SMuFl-compliant) in any of five different musical examples:
Right. I thought, though, that since most of “the biggies” (Bravura, Sebastian, Maestro, November, etc.) that have been mentioned here are included it would be a very handy way to quickly compare (if one narrows down ahead of time to a few SMuFl fonts and is willing to slog through the l…o…n…g list) in examples that include many different symbols. (Sort of @FredGUnn’s excellent swim-meet sampler on steroids.)
TBH, a lot of engraved music (and also music from moveable type) uses very wide noteheads. I think the widest noteheads are Finale Engraver – which also has lovely flags.
I went through a phase of mixing Engraver noteheads and flags with Maestro for everything else.
Many people used to mix 'n match Maestro and Engraver, though I still think one consistent, well-thought-out design would be preferable. It’s a bit like using one typeface for Capital letters and another for lowercase…
Without wanting to bash anybody up, I used November or quite some time for my New Complexity scores until I found the font metrics to be messed up and inadequate or incomplete or in error. In short, it messed up my scores, provably, and I have reverted to Bravura which has no such problems. I would have persisted but the author appears to have abandoned it and is not responsive to communications. But if he is still here, do get in touch, and I can send samples of the issues.
Some of November 's glyphs are absolutely beautiful, and the detail when you zoom in is fantastic. The Renaissance/Medieval glyphs, unsurprisingly, are very fine.
It would be nice, if there would be something similar to a pangram for text fonts: A Dorico project, where all (common) SMuFL characters could be found on 2 or 3 pages …
The problem of demo pages for music fonts is often, that there is only a small subset of characters shown on the page.
True, but wide ones such as Engraver are not as tall as simply scaling up Bravura’s original noteheads. If Dorico’s default staff lines weren’t so thick (no complaint about that, btw), the “larger” noteheads would extend past them on space-notes. This is one detail not dealt with by any software that I’ve seen: Noteheads can look (and function) larger or smaller by just scaling them horizontally. Cue notes in publications done with music typewriter are extremely narrow – not the same shape smaller, which would be harder to read.
I agree that those noteheads were much wider, without being significantly taller, but I’m sure I’ve had a discussion about this, possibly on notat.io, and shown zoomed in scans of plate engraving where the noteheads were indeed taller than 1 space, protruding over the lines.
