How to create and place this ornament

I need to create and apply this ornament. It needs to be always above the note. If the note has an upward stem, the ornament needs to be on the stem. If the note has a downward stem, it needs to hover above the notehead. Does anyone have any advice?


Ornament.png

I would use two solutions and apply them as needed on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately this solution will require revision in the event of transposition or other scenarios in which stem direction changes after initial input.

  1. Upward stems: change the shape of a tremolo you’re not using (likely the “Z on stem” tremolo) to the required shape in Engrave > Music Symbols… (for upward stems)
  2. Downward stems: create a playing technique with the same shape in Engrave > Playing Techniques… and set default placement to Above.

Thanks, Borosini. I know and have tried those methods. The Bravura tremolo glyph is way too thick and the lines are too close together to pass as this ornament. This was the case with all my music fonts but I finally found that one of the November 2 tremolos approaches it pretty well. For the upstem notes I needed to change the tremolo to November, although this didn’t behave as expected. Every time I went back to the Music Symbol editor, it showed Bravura as being the font used. For the downstem notes I changed the Vertical Line Font to November 20 pt. and created a PT using this, having to experiment with horizontal placement by using spaces in the text field. It’s a pity we can’t adjust the vertical distance, though, meaning that they all needed manual positioning. It’d be great if we had more control over this.

The Symbols Editor should offer Bravura by default on the right hand side, for adding new glyphs, but it should let you add any glyph from any font correctly, and save that.

Don’t forget that can even use a vector graphic for a symbol, so if a font isn’t quite what you want, you can outline that character in Illustrator or Affinity Designer, alter it, and then import that.