Punzón - my second SMuFL compliant music font project

[mikkopatama]

Punzón — new SMuFL font, feedback welcome

Hi all,

I’d like to introduce Punzón, a new SMuFL-compliant music font, currently at v0.9. It’s a general-purpose notation font — noteheads, clefs, accidentals, dynamics, articulations, ornaments, and the other core categories are in place and usable in Dorico now.

Some of you may know my earlier font, Eugene — Punzón is a separate project, tracing a different historical engraving tradition, rather than an update or variant of it. Primary references are early 20th century publications of Casa Dotesio (later Unión Musical Española). Well known Dotesio publications include Albéniz’s "12 Piezas características, Op.9”.

It’s not fully feature-complete yet (a few gaps remain, most notably in the pre-composed ornaments), but it should hold up for real engraving work at this stage. If you’d like to try it in Dorico, I’d really appreciate any feedback: critical missing glyphs, spacing or metric issues, anything that looks wrong in actual scores. That kind of testing is exactly what’s useful before calling it 1.0. Punzón already has a Github page, and I’ll create a small website at 1.0 release.

The font is released under SIL OpenFont License and thus is available for free. If you wish to show your support, go ahead and buy me a coffee.

The attached .zip package includes all the necessary font files + installers for Windows and macOS (will require special priviledges for accessing system fonts folder!)

PunzonFont-0.9.zip (1.9 MB)

Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a spin.

A couple of demo scores

Punzon Scriabin Prelude.pdf (75.4 KB)

Punzon ariettes oubliees.pdf (61.4 KB) (for showcasing especially 8th and 16th note flags)

Punzon May Day Remedy.pdf (61.8 KB)

[mikkopatama]

Punzón v. 1.0 now available

Hello there,

I just published the version 1.0. Go ahead and give it a whirl. Package includes installers for both macOS and Windows. I’d be grateful if anyone could confirm that the Windows installer is functioning properly (I did test drive it, but just to be sure since I don’t use Windows often). The installers will require admin priviledges.

PunzonFont-1.0.zip (2.0 MB)

From GitHub release notes:

Added significant amount of new glyphs (from 305 → 471 glyphs).

• Complete coverage of Precomposed trills and mordents
• Complete coverage of rests
• Slash noteheads
• Gould arrow quartertone accidentals
• Bar repeats
• Reversed and turned time signature glyphs
• Straight notehead flags
• Holds and pauses
• Thinner keyboard pedal glyphs with more engraved (read: imperfect) feel
• Coda signs
• Much more articulations
• Staff brackets and system dividers

Some more demo scores for you to look at:

Punzon-Five PréludesOp16.pdf (75.4 KB)

Punzon-Clair de Lune.pdf (161.2 KB)

Punzon - Ice Run.pdf (97.9 KB)

Punzon-May Day Remedy.pdf (61.3 KB)

[Serioso]

I’m liking this one! Your other project, Eugene, seemed more idiosyncratic in its look and feel, so I felt like one would use it specifically to get a certain mood out of the engraving. Not that that’s a bad thing; sometimes, that’s just what we want. Compared to it, Punzon seems more general-purpose; you can use it anywhere.

It reminds me a bit of the old Adobe Sonata, even though the historical inspiration for this one obviously goes back way earlier than that. Maybe that’s why I feel this way about the present project; it’s frankly remarkable how far back the “generic” look of music engraving goes (e.g., not Fromont, Novello, or even Breitkopf).

For the curious, I tracked down the first edition (from 1911!) of the music sampled above on IMSLP. I think you’ve done a great job of reproducing the appearance of it. I’ve also noticed that you’ve gotten more confident with font production after beginning Eugene (obviously still a work in progress, like almost all software).

[mikkopatama]

Thank you for your kind words!

You are absolutely right about the general purpose nature. I believe Eugene engraved score can be spotted immediately even by a less trained eye, since it has much more obvious details that set it apart from ”modern”/typical fonts, starting from the GClef and things like Common sign that is far from typical.

In Punzón, the idiosyncrasies are much more subtle. For example, one that I personally liked and wanted to include from some old Dotesio scores was the way the parenthesis brackets are asymmetrical around accidentals. I re-used those same bracket shapes in other places too. (Which reminds me: in the next update I’ll need to add octave parentheses, the Bravura ones don’t go well with the ottava 8 glyph).

Another groovy and distinct feature of Dotesio scores: the tilt angle of dynamic signs and rests.

This very forward leaning forte-sign combined with the quite substantial size of the eight note flags pose one problem: they take a bit too much horizontal space if you’re working on a dense score. Especially the flag shapes vary quite a bit in the source material, and I’m now considering including some alternative flags and dynamics, either in a variation font called ”Punzón Compact” or just in the Punzon.otf file itself (will require more manual tinkering from the user switching those glyphs).

Now that you mentioned Sonata, I looked at some Sonata scores and you’re right: there are similarities in overall feel. The Sonata G clef looks like the little brother of Dotesio clefs, very similar shape with only slightly smaller top.
The Dotesio G clefs from the Bilbao-Madrid era vary in their tilt angles, sometimes they are consistently leaning in one direction and sometimes not. The shape itself seems otherwise same (I actually compared my gclef with various Dotesio scans), so maybe same punch, different engraver with different taste.

[Serioso]

I like how you thought of the treble clef in comparing Punzon to Sonata. Yes, that is how I spotted the similarity between them in the first place—and, overall, the treble clef is a dead giveaway to just about any music font, metal or digital. (It’s no accident that the publishers I mentioned above all have a very distinctive one.) Perhaps, then, Sonata was inspired in part by Dotesio scores.

As far as the variability of the slant goes, I think that that’s inevitable with any hand-engraved score, especially in the treble clef and the bass clef, since there is no clear horizontal or vertical guideline in either.

[Roland_Gurt]

Dear mikkopatama, I like and appreciate your work with this font (as well as Eugène)!

Your idea about a ”Punzón Compact” version really resonates with me (as someone who likes to approximate the rather tight spacings of traditional scores). Many fonts nowadays ship with multiple versions (like “heavy”, “light”) – I find this very user friendly.

For I compact version, I would humbly suggest (additionally to the narrower dynamics) considering slightly heavier glyphs for symbols like the half note, flat accidental and time signature numbers – as a compact font would often be used in tighter and smaller prints which benefit greatly from the aided legibility.

Best regards
Roland

[dan_kreider]

This is a good idea, although technically the concept of condensed and caption fonts are quite different. Caption fonts are meant to be read at small point sizes.

In addition to a heavier stroke weight, caption fonts sometimes actually have slightly wider glyphs, and sometimes slightly taller. They also have slightly more space between successive glyphs. This is all to aid in legibility at very small sizes. So I wonder if technically these two variants could serve two different purposes.

[mikkopatama]

Good points from both @Roland_Gurt and @dan_kreider.

SMuFL standard includes also separate small staff variants of important glyphs, which I haven’t yet included in Punzón (I did design some of them for Eugene). So these thicker variants will surely be part of both the regular Punzón and the upcoming Punzón Compact, fitting condensed staves nicely.

I will keep going through some good references in the Dotesio catalogue so the Compact will look consistent in style, even though I’m planning to redraw only a small handful of glyphs for it, flags being the primary concern. On a less crowded page I usually prefer larger flags that stand out, that’s how I ended up choosing the reference @Serioso linked earlier. But luckily there are plenty of well scanned references to choose from. For example, the flags and dynamic glyphs on this 1911 Madrid made score would likely work well with all the other glyphs already drawn:

[Serioso]

Okay, I think that, for the first time, I’ve noticed a possible issue with this new font. A lot of others might not have or notice this, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

In Engraving Options > Notes, you have the choice of standard-sized noteheads (confusingly named “default”) or larger noteheads (the actual factory default). I think that most people stick to the default (i.e., larger) noteheads. Generally, I prefer standard-sized noteheads, especially in Bravura; I can see the appeal of larger noteheads, but at least in Bravura, they’re too big.

However, in Punzon, I’ve noticed the opposite problem: the “default” (standard-sized) noteheads are too small, so I’ve had to go back to the larger noteheads when using it. Here’s a side-by-side comparison in Bravura (standard on the left, larger on the right):

Here’s the same comparison in Leland:

And the same comparison in Punzon:

Punzon’s standard noteheads are easily the smallest of the six notehead sets in this comparison. The difference is especially clear in the half-note notehead.

P.S. I didn’t sample the whole-note notehead above, so here’s a comparison of Punzon (standard and larger sizes) for the whole note, in the interest of completeness:

The notehead on the left looks almost like a circle, especially at smaller print sizes, compared to the more oval shape usually encountered with whole notes.

Additional P.S.: It turns out that the right-hand side is actually Bravura in all of the above illustrations. My point about the small noteheads in Punzon still stands.

[asherber]

Does Punzon even have larger noteheads defined? Dorico will fall back to using Bravura larger noteheads if the selected music font doesn’t have them.

[Serioso]

Hm…fair point. I was originally going to say that it took using the larger noteheads in Punzon to come close to the “smaller” noteheads in Bravura or Leland, but on closer inspection, the “larger” noteheads in all three comparisons are the same (i.e., are all taken from Bravura).

Deep in the SMUFL documentation, under Glyph tables > Noteheads > Recommended stylistic alternates, we see that SMUFL defines larger noteheads under SS05, and this is presumably how Dorico (or any other “SMUFL-aware” application that supports larger noteheads) looks for them.

Bravura has the SS05 feature (as expected), but Punzon does not. (Neither does Leland, but that’s another story.*) So, you are right; the right-hand side in all of my examples is Bravura. But then the need to define larger noteheads becomes even bigger, and not just as an alternative to what’s already there; under Dorico’s default Engraving Options**, anyone using Ponzon will unwittingly continue to use Bravura’s larger noteheads.

*Leland’s default noteheads are already pretty close in size to Bravura’s larger noteheads, so there’s not as much of a need for larger noteheads in that font.

**When changing music fonts, you have the option to “Use font’s recommended engraving options.” If you don’t select this, you’ll continue to use whatever engraving options you had previously. But if you do select this when switching to Punzon, you’ll end up with default-size noteheads, even if you had larger noteheads previously.

In summary: I’m making a FR in Punzon for larger noteheads as an option.

[asherber]

@Serioso

When changing music fonts, you have the option to “Use font’s recommended engraving options.” If you don’t select this, you’ll continue to use whatever engraving options you had previously. But if you do select this when switching to Punzon, you’ll end up with default-size noteheads, even if you had larger noteheads previously.

I believe that the setting for Engraving Options > Notes > Notehead Design will change to “Default Noteheads” regardless of whether you tick this box or not.

[Serioso]

Even for switching to Bravura? That would be most surprising; it would mean that larger noteheads are only a Dorico default, but not a Bravura default, even though Bravura is Dorico’s default music font.

[asherber]

@Serioso

Even for switching to Bravura?

No, if you switch to Bravura, you’ll get the Larger Noteheads, even if this box is not ticked.

Larger Noteheads are not a Dorico default, just a default for Bravura.

Reducing default size of notes possible?

Because when we tested out the early versions of Bravura on humans, back when I had to hack its glyphs into Sibelius because we hadn’t yet progressed sufficiently far with Dorico itself to use it to print out music, we tried out a number of different variations for notehead size, and the consensus was that an enlargement of around 7–8% was considered most legible at standard reading distances. That’s therefore why we use the enlarged noteheads by default. However, technically the SMuFL standard …

[mikkopatama]

Thank you for the comparisons @Serioso !

Larger noteheads are definitely coming in the next update, and also oversized variants. Might make the default ones slighly wider, but not much to keep the aesthetic.

[mikkopatama]

Punzón v. 1.1 now released

Available on GitHub or the now ready Punzón website: Punzón — Free SMuFL Music Font

After considering some feedback above, I decided to increase the size of all standard noteheads just a notch to increase overall legibility of Punzón. I also added the Oversized noteheads, not as large as Bravura’s larger noteheads but still about 6% larger than the Punzón defaults. Hope you like them!

[mikkopatama]

Nervión - a Sibelius-mapped version of Punzón

Hello there!

I had many hours sitting in the touring van this weekend, and spent some of that time mapping the Punzón glyphs for a Sibelius-compatible version. I chose the name Nervión, after the river that flows through Bilbao, the birthplace of Casa Dotesio.

Nervión now has it’s own GitHub repo and website. Since Sibelius doesn’t have an automatic fallback behaviour for music fonts, some missing glyphs are replaced either by Bravura glyphs or loaded from Opus font files (note name noteheads, percussion instruments glyphs, special extra symbols, function symbols and chord symbols use Opus Std files for now).