Finale SMuFL fonts now available as standalone download

MakeMusic have released installers for their new SMuFL fonts, so you don’t have to download the Finale 27 demo just to get the fonts.

Bear in mind that the installer will also install all the legacy Finale fonts, of which there are a LOT. It will also install JSON files for the Text fonts, even though these Text fonts are just text fonts, and not “music text” fonts like Bravura Text. If you keep the JSON files for these Text files, then things like Finale Jazz Text will show up as a Music font in Dorico’s Music Font dialog, even though it has NO music symbols.

On Mac, I would recommend using Pacifist, an excellent third-party installer app, which lets you browse through .pkg files and install selected files.

https://www.charlessoft.com

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Thanks Ben!

Thanks for this, Ben. I love using Dorico, but I still prefer the look of Finale’s Maestro music font, so your post is really appreciated!

However, I’m a complete beginner at this (i.e., installing other music fonts for use in Dorico), so I wonder if I can ask you some really basic questions?

  • Does the fact that these Finale music fonts are SMuLF mean that they can be safely used in Dorico? In Dorico 3.5?

  • Is there a specific directory to which they should be installed?

  • In your experience, does using these SMuLF Finale fonts disable or distort adjustments that are deeply editable when using Dorico’s own music font?

  • In your opinion, does using one of these Finale music fonts without making any changes to Dorico’s default text (and other) fonts lead to serious aesthetic inconsistencies?

Thanks again!

  1. Yes, the whole point of SMuFL is standardization. It’s a map of which symbol goes where. Any SMuFL-compliant font should work in any SMuFL-compatible app, because the app knows where every symbol should be.

Previously, in Finale, most fonts followed Maestro’s map, but they didn’t have to: you could change the characters assigned to different symbols. But once you were into ‘auxiliary’ fonts, like Maestro Percussion, there were no rules!

The only issue with Dorico 3.5 is that missing glyphs in the font will show up as … missing. In Dorico 4, missing glyphs are replaced by those in Bravura. Maestro is fairly full, but Engraver and ‘Legacy’ are pretty light on symbols. (Seriously, you haven’t upgraded yet…? :scream:)

  1. The Fonts go in your OS’s normal font folder. The JSON file goes in:
    Windows: C:\Program Files\Common Files\SMuFL\Fonts\NameOfFont/
    Mac: /Library/Application Support/SMuFL/Fonts/NameOfFont/
    e.g. a folder with the font’s name inside “Fonts”.
    You could just use the MakeMusic installer; but if you do that then as said above, I would remove the JSON files for “Finale … Text” fonts, as they aren’t SMuFL fonts at all, but text fonts.

  2. Not quite sure what you’re after here, but: As with text fonts, music fonts will have glyphs that are different width or height. So “contents may settle in transit”, and you may get the odd bit of re-flow.

  3. Academico is basically New Century Schoolbook, which is a commonly used text font in music scores (and indeed, Finale provided NCS -styled Engraver Text fonts).

Many thanks, Ben!

I would love to upgrade to Dorico 4, but I’m using Windows 7 on a desktop computer that operates flawlessly (it was super- hi-end – eight years ago :wink:), and the upgrade would likely lead to a new computer and a number of other upgrades, that I can’t afford at this time. (I’m a composer and music teacher, but not a professional copyist.)

Thanks, again, for your help!

Sorry to trouble you, Ben – another (quick) question: I’ve downloaded the Finale .msi package, and extracted its contents locally using 7-zip. Of the roughly 65 files it contains, I only want to use the actual Maestro music fonts – no text fonts of any kind. If the JSON files are strictly related to text fonts, then it looks like I only need install these three (in green) Maestro fonts:

Am i approaching this correctly, or do I also need to install Maestro-related text (and JSON?) files in order to use the Maestro music fonts?

Thanks again for your kind help!

The SMuFL version of Maestro is “FinaleMaestro.otf”. You need that AND its matching JSON file, which you have to put into:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\SMuFL\Fonts\Finale Maestro/

The fonts you’ve ticked are the old, original Maestro TrueType fonts for Finale, which won’t work at all in Dorico.

Whew! Thanks for the help!

I’m wondering about that “FinaleMaestro.otf” font: when I highlight it:

image

. . . its contents don’t seem to contain any music symbols – just text:

The whole point of SMuFL is not to use the alphanumeric character slots for music symbols, but to assign a bunch of otherwise unused Unicode slots – around 3000 of them!!! – to musical forms.

Most SMuFL fonts will therefore have NO characters in the A-z positions. Windows is ‘helpfully’ filling in the missing characters. You should observe the same for Bravura, for instance.

If you have an app that lets you browse all the symbols in a font, you should see that this contains lots of music symbols.

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Many thanks, Ben!!

Incidentally, I’d delete the “F_TTFonts_Fonts_” from the filename. I don’t think your zip program has done a great job of extracting the fonts’ filenames.

Thanks.

Might be because it’s an old version of 7-zip?

Not sure what I’m doing wrong, but Dorico->Engrave->Engrave->Music Fonts does not show the Maestro font.

Since the .json file also had that similar (and useless?) prefix – “F_Finale_Maestro_FInale_Maestro.json” – I tried five different filenames for it:

  • F_Finale_Maestro_Finale_Maestro.json

  • F_Finale_Maestro.json

  • Finale_Maestro.json

  • FinaleMaestro.json

  • Maestro.json

. . . and - one by one – tried all five versions (along with the FinaleMaestro.otf), in this directory:

image

. . . rebooting Dorico each time – but with no luck.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

Thanks

The JSON file goes there; the font is installed in the normal way as for any other font.

You may need to make sure that all folders and filenames have “Finale Maestro” with a space – or, if that doesn’t work, try all without. FWIW, on my Mac, the folder and JSON file both have a space.

Thanks, Ben.

Do you mean that I should just drop the .otf file into the Windows/Fonts directory?

If that’s what you would do for any other font, yes.

Thanks.
I don’t often add fonts, but I’ll take that as a “yes”. :wink:

In Windows, just double click on the .otf file and windows will ask if you want to install it…

P

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Finally got it to work – thanks again!