Another question: why does changing the music font also change the bar number font, as well as the staff, barline, ledger line and stem thicknesses, as well as the lengths of the ledger lines?
There’s an option for that in the Engrave > Music Fonts dialog, to allow you to choose whether or not to use the font designer’s recommended engraving options.
Marc, you got that in while I was wondering about the above question! I wonder, too. While there may be glyphs of other fonts that I like, I agree that Bravura is a well-balanced font and all the glyphs seem, as you put it very well, elegant and legible.
Thank you, Daniel. I’d missed that. I’d be interested to know exactly which of the enormous number of engraving options actually get changed. Also, what does updating the text fonts do? What do the chosen text fonts have to do with a change of music font? Is that also a font designer’s recommendation?!
Looking at the sharp in a space (not on a line) that is cut off at the right hand edge, the Cadence sharp is a bit taller than the Bravura sharp. The naturals are the same.
Maybe if doesn’t tuck under because it would collide with the note?
The larger accidentals are a nice characteristic of Cadence. Still, there is a lot of extra room added between those two beats compared to the Bravura version. One could move them considerably closer together in the Cadence version without the accidental’s colliding with the previous note. I just find it strange that switching the music font removes the tucking altogether.
Dorico can only perform tucking if the font metadata file provides the required tucking data. I’ve not had a chance to look at MTF-Cadence’s metadata file, so I don’t know whether or not that data is provided, but the evidence of your screenshot is that it is not.
It does seem to provide similar metadata to the Bravura.json file for accidentals – cut-outs and Boundingboxes, though perhaps they could be improved.
I’ve certainly altered some of the Engraving Options further to work with the font, too.
I’m very particular about my quaver down-stem flags, which I like to be chubby and with a little gap at the top. Cadence does those very well, and the rest of the symbols are very nice indeed. As lovely as Bravura is, using Cadence and my choice of text fonts gives me a slightly individual result, without being quirkily so.
One thing I have found with other music fonts is that very occasionally, the stems go a bit mad, and the solution is to re-apply the Music Font (without checking the boxes).
More than a matter of taste, fonts are a matter of function. Which is the best way to deliver the message your score is communicating? Fonts are a great part of this message.
Bravura is a font inspired to the golden age of rational design, in the early 60s. It is bold, clear, unobtrusive, rigorous and elegant as an Helvetica. It works more or less with everything, and is for sure the perfect match to any contemporary style.
Arnold is great to make new editions of the early 20th Century works. Or even for new works inspired to that style. It’s pure Sezession.
Scorlatti is a good match for new editions of contemporary works of the 60s-90s. Think to Ligeti and Penderecki and the composers published in Germany in that era.
Beethoven reminds me of the Henle Urtext editions. Clean, ascetic, highly legible. I’ve also the feeling that some editions of classics in the 50s-60s have been made with a similar font.
Haydn is Peters early 20th Century, and I’m thinking to the Debussy I have in their editions. Elegant like an Art Nouveau line, always soft and rounded.
Cadence, I can’t exactly assign a time, but I have several Ricordi editions of Brahms and Beethoven keeping me back at it. The first edition of the Beethoven revised by Casella is dated 1920.
Paolo
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Thanks Paolo for these detailed explanations!
I’ll try and use those fonts accordingly and will learn to use them on purpose.
Thanks paolo!
I was also especially hoping for scorlatti and Arnold for my contemporary works. Sadly, a lot of glyphs are missing there, which would be crucial for the variety of techniques contemporary music provides. (Which of course will be filled)
Still i was thrown off a Little by the very thin staff lines scorlatti uses.
Fortunately the stafflines thickness belongs to the “easy” to edit Metadata.
It is to find at the beginning of the json file under “engravingDefaults” / “staffLineThickness”
Scorlatti uses 0.09, Bravura uses 0.13
It actually does nothing, because the font changes are hard coded for Dorico’s default fonts right now, and can’t be set for fonts by third party developers.
Thanks, LSalgueiro. I assume you were referring to the font ‘updating’. I’m still wondering which of the engraving options get changed. AFAICS it’s mostly (or only) line thicknesses: staff lines, ledger line (also length), barlines, stems, braces and brackets, and slur and tie thicknesses (but not shape).
I’m still wondering about the kerning inconsistency and if it would be possible to alter the JSON file to correct it.
Ben, I’d be curious to know which setting changes you felt fitted with Cadence as opposed to Bravura.
The engraving settings that get changed are the ones described in the metadata file, structured under “engravingDefaults”. These are no big mystery, and they’re described in the SMuFL specification. I believe there was a time, early on, when not all of these were consumed, but that might not be the case anymore.
As for the so-called kerning inconsistency, I don’t see any. Cadence’s sharp is slightly larger than Bravura’s. Bravura’s already fits extremely snugly under the D; Cadence’s would either not leave enough space, or quite simply collide. This was apparent to me with a naked eye, but try moving it manually in Dorico if you want to make sure.
I would not suggest just fiddling with the JSON unless you know specifically to what ends. The developer knows what he’s doing and why he made the choices he made.
LSalguerio is right: Changing the Cut-out on the Sharp, even to ridiculous proportions, seems to have no effect; but scaling the # to 98% allows it to fit under the note. You can nudge the full-size # under the note in Engrave mode, but it is a tight fit.
(It was Cadence’s slightly bigger accent symbol that alerted me to the fact that you could scale up Bravura’s accent to 102%, to stop it from sitting in the staff.)
November2 also won’t tuck under the note unless you reduce the size of the sharp.
I can’t remember exactly what changes I made to Engraving Options, but suffice it to say that if you are going to use a different font, you will need to spend some time checking that everything is as you want it.
Sadly, we can’t scale individual accidentals, without the notehead scaling as well, at present.
Thank you, I just figured out the same today. Good to have another person confirm your suspicions.
I wonder if there is actually any way to edit these things in Dorico and then save them FONT-SPECIFIC. Meaning, me altering the Staff-Line in a project with Scorlatti and the appropriate .json will be updated.
But of course, one can just change the .json by hand, which is less visual. Also, one would need to be careful and make a backup of the original.
Staff line thickness is also in Engraving Options: so it’s easy enough to create a template file for a given font.
I was looking at a score published by Simrock dated 1873 (Brahms’ Quartets opus 51). The font is nearly identical, including some idiosyncrasies like the slightly slanted Treble key.
So, it seems that Peters inherited the design from Simrock, if not even the license to reprint their Haydn. At the time, Peters did indeed publish work under permission of other publishers.
Paolo
I really miss MTF Improviso. It would make my printed drafts quite coherent with my handwritten notes. Hoping the porting is progressing!
Paolo