MusAnalysis, a new font for RNA and functional symbols

Thank you! Great video!

Has the lowercase “l” changed to uppercase “L”? “%sls” just writes “ls” for me.
With “&3T%sLs%sLs%sL4” I got close but the line is not aligned to the right of the T as shown in the video.

Bildschirmfoto 2021-11-25 um 09.28.50

If I write “D%sLs” the line collides with the D.

Yes, it’s a capital L now. I would recommend playing the extender line section in a different rhythmic position, then nudging it left or right to get the exact placement you want.

Hi folks, after a number of requests regarding line spacing, I’ve made some modified variations of both MusAnalysis and MusGlyphs. They’re unchanged except for their metrics, which I’ve changed to match those of Academico.

If some of you would be kind enough to field-test them before we push them out to current users, I’d appreciate it. Of course these changes to metrics mean that some of the taller glyphs will now be partially cut off, but it also means they should be able to be used with inline text without changing line spacing.

MusFonts Baseline.zip (292.0 KB)

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The original link seems to be dead. Is this just a glitch on my end?

You should be able to find it by googling “MusAnalysis.” It’s available on Notation Central.

This is my first project with Roman numeral analysis, courtesy of MusAnalysis. In Windows it opens OK, but on my Mac I’m getting this error message, which I don’t understand. Replacing the font with Academico italic doesn’t stop the message appearing. Can anyone explain please?
test.dorico (2.7 MB)

There is no MusAnalysis italic. Somewhere you have a paragraph style set for that. You can ignore.

If you change only the lyrics paragraph style to MusAnalysis, you shouldn’t get that error. You may also need to un-italicize Lyrics (Chorus).

Thanks, Dan. It seems that the font you specify for Lyrics is automatically inherited by Lyrics (Chorus), Lyrics (Translation) and Lyrics (Chorus Translation).

I still don’t understand why the error message was appearing (on Mac, though not Windows), since this project doesn’t use any of those styles. But it doesn’t really matter.

They’re cascading styles. If you go to that Paragraph Style page, you’ll see “parent style” or something like that. Basically, whatever you set as lyrics will cascade down to other lyric styles derived from it. And since lyric chorus is italic by default, that’s probably the reason. Your project is trying to use MusAnalysis italics, until you tell it not to.

Yes, I see that. But what is it trying to use MusAnalysis italics for, given that the project doesn’t call for Lyrics (Chorus) etc?

The program does not know ahead of time that you will not use Chorus or Translation, so it warns you. The best advice is (in this case) to ignore the warning.

In that case the message is misleading, because it refers to fonts used by (not “available for use by”) items in the project. Also, it’s odd that the Mac version gives the warning and the Windows version doesn’t.

The reason the warning appears on macOS and not on Windows is due to a platform difference in how fonts are handled by the operating system. On Windows, regardless of what font styles are provided by a font family, it will always report that Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic styles are present, because any missing styles among those four will be automatically synthesised (often with laughably poor results) by the operating system. On macOS, on the other hand, only styles that actually exist on the system will be reported as being installed. So when you have a paragraph or font style that uses one of these synthesised styles, Windows will be happy with it because as far as it is concerned, that style does exist, but macOS will complain. Dorico itself can’t tell whether a font really exists beyond what the operating system tells it.

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Daniel, thank you: that explains the difference. But Dorico does know which styles are used in a project. I wonder whether it needs to get upset because the font specified for a style not used is not installed, even if that style (were it used) would inherit the font family for a style that is used! Or, in particular, to report that the missing font is used.

No need to reply, it’s just a suggestion. I would probably have been less confused if I had got more familiar with Dorico before installing MusAnalysis; but harmonic analysis was one of the main reasons I got Dorico.

Hi Dan,

I really enjoy your font! I have a question regarding the stacking with a superscript “v”. It seems as I can’t make it work. I type “(&7Dv5b)”, but I want the “5b” below the v. Anytime I try with a % and s I get strange signs because of the “v”, e.g. “(&7D%v5sb)”
Stacking
Stacking fail

Best,
Gabi

In the functional analysis, the symbols ♭ and ♯ are not used, but > is used to indicate a half-tone lower change and < to indicate a half-tone higher change.

Hi there,

I finally have something to analyse today, so I bought your font!
It is amazing, but I have a problem:
I have entered the following strings to indicate a semitone raised 4:
viio4'.n //iv
However, it does not display correctly in Dorico 4.3.30.
When reopening the popover, ' is automatically converted to as follows:
Screenshot 2023-05-20 at 12.21.07 PM

How can this be fixed?

Thanks in advance!

Sorry, unfortunately you can only use the double slash in conjunction with basic Roman numerals. Each glyph had to be created individually, and there were only a finite number of possibilities.

I did not ask about the use of double slashes.
Probably my post was written in a confusing way.
What I am asking is why the following symbol is not displayed correctly:
42e59cea10bf2eae75ca95920322029878fc3eaa
According to your guide, 4' is the correct way to display the symbol above. However, Dorico displays it as follows:
Screenshot 2023-05-20 at 1.23.21 PM
In the following example, I have typed the same characters as in your example, but the display is different:
Screenshot 2023-05-20 at 1.32.25 PM

Why does it happen?

It might be because you’re using the apostrophe instead of the tick? I’m not sure, sorry. I stopped working on the font two years ago and can’t remember half of what it does. The documentation is a comprehensive record of everything it does (and more than I remember).