That’s what art is! only jazz players will have tendency to like/love handwritten fonts, this was my conclusion 20 years ago.
Jazz player here, and I fully endorse this statement. Noteheads are too small, numbers are illegible at smaller type sizes (much rehearsal time wasted when players can’t tell the difference between the 3 and 5 at bar number sizes), no descenders to assist legibility, little difference between upper and lower case m glyphs cause confusion when composers/copyists use chord symbols like CM7 (is it major or minor?), most people never bother to learn how to use the heavy line or boxes with text correctly so it ends up looking dumb, etc.
There’s a singular exception that I’ve found to this: someone shared a gorgeous example of a classically-styled engraver’s hand written font on the notat.io forum a while back. A piece of Chopin I believe. I’d pay good money for that font, but to my knowledge it’s a private project and not for sale anywhere.
It’s in process.
Good. Let me know; I don’t haunt that forum very much. It stopped me dead in my tracks because it was so beautiful.
And for those who clicked on the generic link above, here’s an example of a beautiful classical handwritten font: The treble clef as handwritten by great composers - Page 4 - NOTATIO
Very beautiful!
I’m one of those who love handwritten fonts before a score is finally going to be officially released. They give a sense of work in progress, a scent of fresh ink, that typographic fonts printed with an inkjet printer can’t carry.
Nearly all handwritten fonts commercially available are of a particular type, targeted to jazz and associated styles. They are conceived for something different from classical handwritten calligraphy. Traits are strong, notes and chord symbols immediately legible even in a less-than-optimally lighted stage. They carry a sense of immediacy and practicality.
Handwritten characters used in (modern) classical music are very similar to printed ones, but contain a sense of shorthand speed, of lightness, of nervous gesture that the printed ones don’t need or can contain. MTF Improviso (not available for Dorico) is a beautiful example of this type of calligraphy. LS Iris (by Luís Salgueiro, a member of this forum) is a great example of the most recent European modern classical calligraphy.
Paolo
I very much like that font also. Nobody knows what it is?
It’s called Arensky. It’s a creation of odod, an engraver who is a poster on Notat.io. The font is being converted to SMuFL and will hopefully be available for purchase soon.
Finale v27 will be released next week, and fortunately any SMuFL font (including mines) will work in Finale v27. Can’t wait to see the results next week.
Where have you heard the release date?
I’m more interested in getting Maestro and Engraver working in Dorico!
The thing that got me about Finale was using a 27" iMac but not being able to enlarge the Shape Designer, which meant creating complex shapes in a few square inches. Fortunately with Dorico it is easier to add and place graphics from specialist drawing software, so the problem has largely sorted itself out.
And being able to use the November 2 font in Dorico straight away is wonderful.
Out next Tuesday, apparently.
I told you … Will see
But you said next week last week, meaning this week!
I’ve told this week by an engraver friend close to MM… if not this week, maybe later.
Sure, it takes less than a minute to read the text, but the discussion of Finale development, i.e. what it’s all about, is an audio file which takes 47 minutes to listen to. I’d much rather have a transcript of what was said, which I could probably read in less than 5 minutes.
Maybe comment on the Scoring Notes post, where Philip’s likely to see it - he’s been known to put up automated transcriptions that aren’t terrible.
(By “aren’t terrible” - transcription apps do seem to struggle here with my embarrassingly posh English accent. You can probably figure out what I actually said here:)