Installing United Sound Notation Font?
Hi everyone,
I am a high school music teacher, and a part of the program at my school is a chapter of United Sound. United Sound is an inclusive environment where students with special needs can engage in playing an instrument and participate in ensembles. Students involved in the band and orchestra classes work alongside these new musicians to help them learn to play their instrument in preparation for a concert.
One of the accommodations used in United Sound is a specialized notation using pictures to represent rhythm syllables (a cake is a quarter note, two doughnuts are two 8th notes, etc.) which are then color coded to represent specific notes on the instrument. MakeMusic has developed a notation font with these images, and templates are available for the Finale and Sibelius notation softwares. I'm wondering if there is a way to install this font for use in Musescore?
I've searched the Musescore forums for topics related to additional fonts. One suggestion is to compile the font into the Musescore through github. However, I do not know how to do that. Is this a possibility? What are the steps to make that happen? Or is there another way to install the font (assuming it is possible and supported by the program in the first place.)
I understand that additional fonts will make it difficult to share scores on the Musescore website, but that is not a concern for me. My primary goal is to share the music with my students on paper.
Thank you in advance for your time and support.
Comments
If this is a SMuFL music notation font, then you should be able to use it in MS 3.7 evolution.
But is this even a music notation font?
"a cake is a quarter note, two doughnuts are two 8th notes" ?
In reply to If this is a SMuFL music… by graffesmusic
An example of the font is in the attached image. It is based on standard notation, but the note heads are altered to represent the words used as rhythm syllables. I did not get the font from the SMuFL website, but I don't know if that's the only source for them. If it's helpful, the file I have for the font is an .otf file.
In reply to An example of the font is in… by jproctorshs
Your attached example shows
![Font.png]( "Font.png")
...and the site for download: https://www.unitedsound.org/font
mentions: "Please send your friends to this page, not directly to the download."
Do you have the "directly to the download" URL, or do you have a copy of the free font that you can attach here?
Since it "works with all notation software", the file format (and extension) would be informative, and someone here can try it out.
In reply to Your attached example shows … by Jm6stringer
I'm hesitant to share the font files I have at the moment. I'm asking United Sound if it's okay to share.
In reply to An example of the font is in… by jproctorshs
I took a look at the tutorial video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4L21vxwU_Q
It seems there is a lua script in Finale. Installing the font alone, if it is SMuFL to start with, probably will not work in MS37.
see: https://youtu.be/o4L21vxwU_Q?t=1025
Maybe a MS plugin could be written with the same functionality.
Perhaps the folks at MakeMusic could write a MuseScore plugin to make it work with any notation program.