font for tablature

• Jan 8, 2020 - 11:24

Hi,

there is no way to change the font for the tablature?

Wolfgang

Comments

• Jan 8, 2020 - 12:00

Right click within the staff (Ctrl-Click on Mac)
Choose Staff/Part properties from the popup menu.
Open Advanced properties with the button which is located bottom-right of the top section of the Staff/Part properties window.
There you can choose between 8 different fonts for tablature

Reply

• Dec 12, 2020 - 08:59

I've created four tablature fonts and I need the option of using them in MuseScore before I can fully adopt MuseScore as my main scorewriter.

Naturally I wonder why MuseScore limits us to eight baked-in fonts for tablature fret numbers? Without even the option to change the font Weight.

We have StaffProperties>AdvancedStyleProperites>FretMarks>Font

Would it be within reason for MuseScore to allow a Tablature staff's FretMarks>Font to be any system font (or user library font)? We have that kind of font freedom in many places within MuseScore.

As an esteemed colleague says, "If we had some eggs we could have eggs and ham, if we had some ham."

scorster

Reply

• Dec 12, 2020 - 19:41

>> This sounds really interesting. Could you share a picture of some samples?

Some of my fonts contain proprietary concepts and encoding so first I need to decide what I want to reveal publicly.

However one font is quite simple.

I prefer san serif fonts in tablature and was stuck with Helvetica—because, in the notation apps I used, only Helvetica properly aligned itself vertically to the staff, and there was no way to tweak it's y placement overall, as we can in MuseScore. So along with addressing the y placement issue:

• I created my own set of "sans" numbers for tablature.
• I opened up the 3 because there's a tendency for a 3 on a tablature line to look like an 8.
• I raised the waist of the 8 so it shows partly above the line.
• I set glyph side bearings so double digit numbers would sit closer, side by side, without pair kerning nor the need to rely on the app to support auto kerning. As you can see, the numbers 10, 11, 12 etc. take up far less space (which was an important criteria) and regarding legibility there's no question that 10 (ten) is not 1 0 (one and zero).

TAB Helvetica numbers.png

TAB Sans test on staff.png

I also created a handwritten tab number font, but mostly for promotional imagery, and later found it worked well in Chord Symbols, especially at small sizes:

  Fat Felt chords symbols 01 small.jpg

FatFelt Music Symbols.jpg

Overall that test font looks like this:

Fat Felt font test Lorem Ipsum and Special chars.png

Interestingly, all these font images look heavy posted here on the forum. Maybe that's a PNG thing.
Suffice it to say they need a little tweaking, but they are not as gloppy or bold as they appear here.

scorster

Reply

• Dec 12, 2020 - 20:31

This looks good, very clear, and I like how you've tackled 2 digit fret numbers.

I much prefer a sans-serif font for TAB but find that the built-in ones are too light, (with no semi-bold, let alone bold option), especially compared with notation which appears darker because of the noteheads. I had hoped to use Segoe Semi-bold on Windows 10 but soon found that external fonts are not supported.

In MS I disallow the tab lines from showing through the numbers so the problem with 3 looking like 8 is avoided. I also make most non-fret elements grey rather than black in an attempt to make the fret numbers more prominent.

Reply

• Dec 12, 2020 - 21:14

>> yonah_ag wrote >>This looks good, very clear, and I like how you've tackled 2 digit fret numbers.

> Thanks. The side bearing settings allow me to work with narrow measures while preserving legality of >9 frets. Really helps in a score like Barrios Mangore's La Catedral, Prelude:

      La Catedral - TAB Sans font test.png

>> I find that the built-in [tablature fonts] are too light

> I created a single weight fontFace, but when I get back into FontLab (after a large system update here) I'll check to see if it creates reasonable bold and light variants; if they are good enough I could manually tweak the details. Otherwise it again would be all by hand.

>> In MS I disallow the tab lines from showing through the numbers so the problem with 3 looking like 8 is avoided.

> Good point.

>>I also make most non-fret elements grey rather than black in an attempt to make the fret numbers more prominent.

I like that idea! There's a style to set the color of staff lines.

Wonderful if you can post an example.

scorster

Reply

• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:32

The issue with this is always that this would mean your score could not be shared with others who don't have that font (eg, on musescore.com). So in general, this is not something anyone has really been to keen to support.

But it should be noted, if you don't care about sharing your score, and it's your own custom font, you could simply name it the same as one of the built in fonts, then install it normally, MuseScore will see it in preference to the built in version.

Reply

• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:54

Perhaps there could be a fallback internal font for missing external fonts and this could be defined in the score setup as "Free Serif" or "Free Sans". This would allow normal sharing. Something similar already works for custom soundfonts that users have installed. The score can still be shared but simply plays back without the custom sounds.

Reply

• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:59

Marc Sabatella wrote>> this would mean your score could not be shared with others (eg, on musescore.com) who don't have that font

> Understood. Although I expect to share scores on MuseScore.com, the vast majority of my scores are purely for in-house use, so sharing source scores doesn't heavily influence my opinion. My prevailing concern is the ability to print and create PDFs of my work with my tablature fonts. (At some point I could share or license my fonts, and MuseScore could be a likely partner.)

Marc Sabatella wrote>> ... you could simply name your custom font the same as one of the built in fonts, then install it normally, MuseScore will see it in preference to the built in version.

> You mean to employ a font managing trick? If so, I really appreciate the advice, but I really prefer not to extend workarounds to the system level.

I understand and admire that MuseScore encourages people to share their scores. A brilliant model. And of course that means MuseScore want to ensure compatibility, for instance by limiting the choices of fonts to those MuseScore bakes in at compile.

As you say, there's some logic in that—because there's no guarantee that others have the same fonts installed on their system. So given the current version of MuseScore, limiting tablature fonts help enable reliable sharing, but it also shuts down many options for those wanting to customize their scores when they have no intent or need to share them. It's actually very limiting.

Could there be a happy medium?

How about a "Sharing-safe Font Compatibility" checkbox, on by default. When I toggle that off I have access to all my system font, including the fonts I've created. And museScore could offer font substitution whenever a font is not found, or fall back on its default font. Without asking MuseScore does this automatically when I publish to .com using a lyric font other than FreeSan or FreeSerif.

If I set the lyrics font to Optima MuseScore.com display FreeSans as the fallback font. Why not so for tablature fret number font? In either case the score would still be compatible for sharing. In the world of web fonts there should be some flexibility.

A little more freedom would go a long way in supporting and fostering more creativity and innovation!

scorster

Reply

• Jun 20, 2020 - 20:12

I wish to change the font in tablature because the default font is too light for me to see when printed. The problem I'm running into is that all the fonts, with the exception of the default font, display the 10th fret as an "x" instead of "10".

Reply

• Dec 18, 2020 - 03:29

Here's another reason why I need MuseScore to allow me to set the Tablature font to any font in my system as a tablature font in MuseScore.

Presently (in 3.5.2) the slash-strum notehead symbol is far too small—because it's simply a regular slash char from the currently selected built-in tablature text font.

I could fix this in a heartbeat‚ by editing the / glyph in custom my custom tablature font—but presently there's no point because, in MuseScore, I can't access system installed fonts without:

  a) compiling it in each update
  b) performing a font hack on my system

And niether of the those options are appealing to me.

Please come up with a compatibility solution like the simple fallback suggestions in this thread.

We can set Staff Text and to any fontFace ... why not tablature too?

scorster

Reply

• Feb 5, 2023 - 13:59

Digging into Style window, i find out there are two settings for musical font. There's a Musical symbols font, and a Musical text font. Which symbol/text does these two settings apply to? Why can't i choose Edwin there? I'm so confused.

Reply

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.