Inspired by the expert font designers in the Dorico community, I made a font (using Bravura glyphs) specifically for the rare circumstances in which Dorico’s rhythmic cues aren’t yet ideal. Depending on your needs, you might find it helpful.
Rhythmcues allows for the creation of unpitched cues which are independent from “real” notes on the staff, and therefore do not influence stem direction, stem length, tie direction, beam angles, articulation placement, or horizontal spacing.
While individual untied/unbeamed rhythmic cue notes can easily be typed as staff text, Dorico’s playing techniques present clear advantages, including automatic vertical positioning below chord symbols, and the ability to use transition/continuation lines as ties, beams, and tuplet brackets.
Oversized slash noteheads are supported, as are stacked articulations of duration and force.
Though “real” notes’ stems, beams, and articulations can be adjusted to compensate, Dorico’s rhythmic cues’ vertical distance can only be edited globally, posing problems for layouts in alternate transpositions.
Rhythmcues also allows for greater consistency in rhythm dot scaling and placement.
The attached Dorico project has an extensive library of custom playing techniques, a character set, and instructions for how to apply the custom line styles for ties, beams, and tuplets.
Rhythmcues Font - 2026-02-01.pdf (102.3 KB)
Rhythmcues Font.dorico (2.8 MB)
Here’s all necessary scripts for globally adjusting the beam transition lines in engrave mode.
Rhythmcues Beam Adjustment Scripts.zip (11.2 KB)
And finally the font itself.
Rhythmcues-Regular.otf.zip (10.5 KB)
Certainly, many (most?) Dorico users will never have a need for this font; however, if it proves useful to you, I’d love to hear feedback, suggestions, or requests.
I am neither a professional programmer nor font designer, merely a piano player and copyist. My apologies for any errors or issues!
