Yes, that’s it! The neums now look like they’re following the text, and the spacing looks more like the Solesmes publications etc…
The glyphs are beautiful, and I applaud all the work so far.
One detail I notice, that will be impossible to handle automatically, is that in engraved Solesmes chant they always align the neume with the first vowel in the syllable.
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Ah yes, well, quite easy to adjust!
This seems to be a great solution for this for now.
In the future, if Dorico ever adds special support for modern spatial notations (where a bar has a certain amount of time across it, like 10 seconds, proportional spacing is used, and black noteheads are used with duration lines that show how long a note is held for, and no rests are shown), perhaps this same solution could work for neumes as well and allow them to be entered as custom noteheads to allow for playback.
There’s also something a bit funny in the idea that a solution made for late 20th century spatial notation might work too for Gregorian chant neumes. What was old is new again, in a sense.
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I second the remarks about Solesmes usage. The problem with making neumes is that sometimes you need manual intervention to make neumes that otherwise won’t exist just by entering them.
The spacing is also important (the pure Vatican Edition especially depends on this, but so do Dom Mocquereau’s Solesmes/Desclée editions); handling this within the neume entry itself seems ideal (Gregorio uses / and ! for this) given the nature of neumes — or else some way to make it consistent is important. (Otherwise, advantage Gregorio.)
Gregorio emphatically does not use the spacing of the dot, or mora vocis, in the way that Solesmes does/did for technical reasons. And 9/10 I think that it is worth improving.
What about the virga? It isn’t always obvious to Gregorio that it needs to be entered automatically but nevertheless some combinations will trigger it. Same with the diamond neumes of descending notes.
Controls over the line breaks is important. Gregorio still has a tricky issue where the pressus splits in half at points where it cannot do so above all according to the Solesmes style.
Also, since we have dots and the episema, a tweaked staccato would be great for the vertical episema or ictus.
Thanks for your thoughts. A few short comments:
- In fact it’s not impossible to create every glyph combination in the back end (within reason), and allow some custom control for the edge cases. The font does become a little bloated, but considering that the average Dorico file is something like 1.5 MB, even the biggest font is practically nothing.
- I’ve anticipated the spacing issue. The way I’m solving it here is that every glyph has a L/R bound of 0 (meaning, no space on either side), and the user can use “s” as a small spacing increment. Does that solve this issue? I might make the “s” wider, so not so many are needed…
3. Not sure what you mean about the mova vocis. Can you explain?
4. Both the virga and diamond are entered manually, using v and d, followed by the number:
5. Line breaks are handled using Dorico’s native functionality. That’s exactly why I wanted this in Dorico… full control.
6. Since these are technically “lyrics,” articulations won’t work here. They have to be added as ligatures.
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- Sounds good to me. Will wait and see.
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- there looks best compared to the Vatican Edition/Solesmes with just a quick glance. You cannot in any case have a default of no space — but some neumes are spaced further apart even though in some cases you see them closer together (which is the default). Other neumes are broken as a default but need to be brought together occasionally.
- So this gets back to 2. The mora vocis (pause of the voice) is what we say when speaking of lengthened notes with a pause (sometimes not really made at all, and arranged hierarchically depending on its place at the end of the word alone, the incise (marked with the quarter bar), the member (up to the half bar) or the phrase (the full bar) and the end of a piece (or where alternation occurs in certain genres of the repertoire, like a hymn, the Ordinary, and so on) at the double bar.
Other pauses are made by spacing the notes with a gap, the width of one neume in the Vatican Edition. These occur in melismas, and you see this referred to as the melismatic mora vocis (MMV online). This spacing is crucial for anyone using the Vatican Edition without rhythmic markings. Mocquereau’s editions like the Liber Usualis did not follow this exactly, and the other thing about the dot is that as the neume placement did follow the Vatican Edition’s spacing, the dot goes in some strange placing. Which as I note, Gregorio’s devs didn’t feel bound by this but it’s mostly an improvement.
4. I see.
5. Well however it works is somewhat immaterial to me; I just want the shape in included and appropriately drawn. 
the thing is, I’ll have to keep working in Gregorio but am seriously interested in graphical input. Keep an open mind etc. But IMHO, a non-zero percentage people interested in neumes are gonna want the Solesmes signs or at least won’t be opposed to you including them (the Vatican Basilica, many if not most people chanting in France, in the Anglosphere follow Solesmes with some or all signs); people interested in scholarly editions only will use round stemless notes anyway.
Thanks, I appreciate the input. Will keep developing it and see where we get.
Getting closer. These three phrases were input entirely in Dorico using MusChants. It took all of 60 seconds.
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You did it! 
wow! Bravo Dan!!
If I only had this during my gregorian chant courses… it’s marvelous
I’m finally able to circle back to this now that I’ve made it through the weekend and some other obligations. Dan, I’m loving this, and it will revolutionize my life.
My singular observation at present is that the neume sizes aren’t quite right, and I know this was echoed in the FB discussions as well. (I’m pleased to see this generating so much attention! Just goes to show there are many of us out there who still use square notes, which gives me the warm fuzzies.). Each of the squares (puncti?) should all be the same size, more/less, apart from liquescent and diamonds (although your diamonds already look perfectly acceptable). TBH, GABC has this dialed in, and I’d use that as the measure, rather than old scans of poorly printed books. (You might be able to use the embedded font, actually. It’s open source, I think.)
“drop down, ye children of the hebrews!” 
Haha yeah, those definitely don’t go together!
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I was working mostly from older books and had wondered why there were different sizes. I started with glyphs from Bravura but I’m pretty far into customizing everything, so I think I’ll just look at GABC and adjust what I have to match it. Shouldn’t take too long.
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I think this is largely due to poor printing technology back in the day. Some of my older books were clearly done on a printing press, so there’s always variation in all of those little details because of each piece used. There’s also the hand-engraving aspect, and when those books are SO large and filled with literally thousands of chants, it’s little wonder that those engravers didn’t have all day to make them perfect.
I’m so grateful you’re doing this.
Would you say this is the definitive reference for neume design and proportion now?
Yes, if only by default since it’s the only way to generate new scores that I know of, apart from Medieval in F…
Now, you’re going to likely want to skin me for this… but I did just remember about an old St. Meinrand chant font that I stumbled across once, but I don’t think many people bother with it. It was developed back in the 90’s for using in Word. Chant Fonts | Saint Meinrad Archabbey
I am genuinely sorry I didn’t think of this sooner. It still may be worth perusing.
Everyone I know who does anything with chant these days does GABC—because it’s the only feasible way to get anything done. I’m sure there are people other than myself who would be more than happy to have an alternative.
Thanks. I had seen that, I think. It doesn’t really differ significantly from GABC in the design of the neumes, right?
As I was inputting these examples above last night, I was struck by how fast and easy it was. That’s the goal here: put it in Dorico, and give a convenient alternative. Obviously plenty of folks are happy to keep using the current options, which is great.
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I’m with you 100%. Making it EASY and fast is a big deal. But more to the point: making it possible to intersperse with regular Dorico to have the two forms of notation side-by-side will be a huge deal. As for design, I think they are relatively similar. I wouldn’t be surprised if one was derived from the other.
