Is there any way I can put more space between the left parenthesis and the quarter note?
This looks more like a font bug to me… What music font are you using here?
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Im using Finale Maestro for the quarter note and Academico for the number
Try with Bravura or Sebastian?
the Sebastian one works but only because its small. I get the same problem with Bravura
i can make it bigger but would like to use Finale Maestro if possible
It seems that you are trying to use a quarter note that is bigger than what it should be by default, right?
In that case you are using two different fonts in the same object, which is likely the cause of the issue.
TBH, the essential difference in “style” between all the music fonts for this one symbol is almost zero.
The default for “Metronome Music Text Font” is Bravura Text. That’s a special version of Bravura, designed to be used alongside other text symbols. The default size is 10pt, but here it is at 15pt:
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Notice in that (default) example that the bottom of the notehead aligns with the baseline, which is what you need in a metronome mark, as opposed to trying to center the note on the cap height (which never works very well anyway).
Ahhh i see. I was able to use Finale Maestro Text as my number font and it works out well.
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Confusingly, the Finale “Text” fonts are … just text; whereas Bravura Text, Sebastian Text and others are fonts of music symbols, designed to work in text environments.
I’d like to object: The SMuFL text fonts (the file names start with “Finale”) contain also music symbols.
Ah: Finale Maestro Text does. I’m fairly sure the others don’t – mostly the handwritten “jazz” text fonts.
@benwiggy Indeed the others don’t.
@bmoriak The issue is caused by the considerably lower baseline of the note symbols in Finale Maestro Text. The implicit added parentheses are designed for a symbol aligned centered with the equal sign.
Lengthy history of ‘text’ in the names of fonts for those really interested
- Before computer typesetting, the term ‘text’ (in English) referred to either
- body-text type, as opposed to headline and decorative type, or
- the “textura” form of blackletter
- Before Unicode, computer music fonts had to be pi fonts, with the music glyphs in place of the alphabet and other ASCII codepoints. When fonts for handwritten styles were developed for Finale (such as Jazz), they needed companion alphabetic fonts in matching styles, which were then called “[name] Text”.
- The font families that come with Sibelius (Opus, etc.) have separate fonts for the slightly different music characters used in text blocks such as tempo markings. These are called “[name] Text” – even though they are still pi fonts! Fonts for Sibelius name their companion alphabetic fonts “[name] Script”.
- Music software finally caught up with the advent of Unicode with SMuFL (2013) which solves all this confusion by using the Private Use Area of Unicode, so a single font can contain all the needed music glyphs, with no substituting glyphs on established codepoints.
- Bravura (like other music fonts) was designed with a very large default line spacing, to accommodate the treble clef and other tall glyphs on an em-height matching the 5-line staff. Bravura Text has all the same (≈2600) glyphs at a smaller size and with more normal line spacing, intended for incorporating music glyphs within text. This is a completely different usage of ‘text’ from the older music fonts.
- The SMuFL spec does not even deal with alphabetic codepoints; these are handled by the default Academico family in Dorico, or indeed by whatever regular text type you prefer. Thus there can still be confusion when someone tries to use a music font such as Bravura for text such as a rehearsal mark.
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