Music Fonts for Dorico Elements

Hello people,

I am wondering if it’s possible to download & use 3rd party music fonts in Dorico Elements, and if so - does anyone here have any good tips on hand written fonts inspired by the more traditional classical style? I figured that it would give a nice visual touch for my projects, thanks in advance and cheers!

Sure. In Elements and SE it’s Edit > Music Fonts.
November 2, some of the MTF fonts and Nor’s fonts (norfonts.ma) are all worth a look, and Finale recently made SMuFL versions of all of their fonts.

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I’d add Sebastian font to that list :wink:
Edit: sorry, it’s not handwritten.

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Most handwritten fonts are designed to mimic 20th-century copyists, who wrote out music in the days when that was quicker and easier than getting something printed.

I don’t think there are any that are ‘inspired by traditional classical composers’. In fact, I’m not sure what that means. “It looks like Beethoven’s handwriting?” (I wouldn’t want that!)

I would strongly advice that if you’re writing music that is ‘inspired by traditional classical composers’, that you use fonts that mimic traditional engraving (e.g. Bravura, Maestro, November, MTF-Cadence, etc) rather than hand-written fonts, which tend to be used more in areas like jazz, music theatre and others.

Take also a look to @LSalgueiro 's font “LS Iris”, a contemporary classical inspired handwritten font. It definitely has a very different look to most handwritten jazz fonts out there.

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This is so lovely and pleasing for the eyes, might be exactly what I was looking for, thanks for the suggestion!

So I have just downloaded the LS Iris font from MTF, I extracted the file and installed the font in my computer. But when I navigate to "Edit > Music Fonts, I can only see Bravula and petamula, so why can’t I see the LS Iris font that I just downloaded? According to the file, it’s supposed to work in dorico. I also tried to paste the JSON-file to Dorico > fonts > metadata, where all the other fonts lies, but I still can’t see “LS Iris” as an option in dorico.
Do you know how solve this?

I just bought LS Iris, the “private version” to try it out, however I have now installed the font in my computer but I still can’t see it as an option in dorico, do you know what the problem might be? I also tried to paste the JSON-file to Dorico > fonts > metadata (where all the other fonts lies, but it still didn’t work :confused:

Hi.
You must install the.otf font along with your “normal” fonts, and that’s the special step put the json file inside a folder named exactly as the font (without the json suffix) and put that folder in the same folder that contains all the other music font json folders. Restart Dorico and the font should be available.
There is no other solution than this one.

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It works now thanks to your excellent instruction! Thanks!

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Sorry to reopen this thread, but I’ve been trying to add LS Iris to Dorico (4) and have not had luck.
I’ve properly installed the .otp alongside all my other computer fonts. I’ve created a folder called “LS Iris” in [Program Files >> Dorico4 >> fonts >> metadata] and put “LS Iris.json” inside of it. I’ve reset Dorico and my computer twice and I cannot see LS Iris in Dorico when I go to Library>Music Fonts.

Any thoughts?

The correct folder for the JSON file on Windows is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files/SMuFL/Fonts/fontname /fontname .json

Read here for more details:
https://w3c.github.io/smufl/latest/specification/font-metadata-locations.html

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Simple as that, huh? Of course!

Thank you so much!

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