Hand copied appearance

• Apr 11, 2011 - 16:11

This is rarely an issue for me but I thought I would ask anyway.

I seem to recall that Finale, Sibelius, or one of those has a “hand manuscript” font. The font for notes, rests, etc., appear more as if copied by hand, rather than formally typeset. I could be wrong, but I think I have seen this in the past.

I notice that it is possible to get this “look” in MuseScore with chord names. Is it possible to do also with the music symbols?

It is my experience that many jazz musicians tend to “tense up” a bit when confronted by formally set music. They are often much more relaxed and comfortable with hand copied manuscript.


Comments

It's not yet possible to use a Jazz font for the music notation in MuseScore. The main obstable is the fact that such a font is not available for free distribution and modification.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Speaking of Lilypond, I happened across their website before finding MuseScore.

As I recall, I found some rather dreadful examples of music setting which they were exhibiting as samples of Lilypond’s best work.

For example, I saw some extracted instrumental parts which would present something such as a 48 bar multi-measure rest immediately preceding an important and exposed entrance -- with no entrance cues or anything else to aid the hapless performer. I am inclined to blame the *“music setter” rather than the software. Of course MuseScore will do the same thing if you don’t bother to supply some cues or other roadmaps. But this is fairly easily accomplished in MuseScore by copy and paste (i.e, copy some passages from the full score, paste them into the parts, then change them to cue-size.) Surely Lilypond can do something similar, although no one did.

There were other such ill advised practices, most of which I have now forgotten. I do think this sort of thing is rather naïve if you are trying to present your best work. Surely it was the user(s) and not the software.
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* I will often revert to the term “music engraver” since the process was done directly into metal plates for a couple of centuries. The term is still used in the music publishing trade today.

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