Need Alphabetic/Musical font

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Need Alphabetic/Musical font

2010-08-08 06:47 pm

I searched the community "font" threads, but didn't see any addressing the specific issue I'm facing.

I'm trying to enter scores from a Spanish language hymnal that contain what I assume are chord markings above the treble clef. For example, it has things like "Reb" and "Mib7" (where 'b' is a flat character). My problem is I can't find a font which contains both sharps/flats & letters/numbers. Surprisingly, the Times New Roman font that comes with Windows contains a sharp character (Unicode 266f), but not a flat (Unicode 266d) (at least, not that I can find). And the NWC2STDA font that NWC uses doesn't have letters.

In other words, I can't find a single font to accurately render this type of score. Anyone have any ideas?

Dick Adams

Re: Need Alphabetic/Musical font

Reply #1 – 2010-08-08 07:04 pm

After some more digging, I found that some of the fonts supplied with Windows 7 do support both alphanumeric characters & sharps/flats. However, NWC doesn't render them correctly.

For example, on my test score, I go into Page Setup & set the User 1 font to DejaVu Serif Condensed Bold. Then I insert the text "Sib" (where b is the flat character, copied via the cilpboard from the Windows CharMap utility. At first, the flat character appears correctly in the dialog. But when I close the dialog, the flat character appears as a question mark in the score, as if the font I specified is being ignored. Is this an NWC2 bug?

Re: Need Alphabetic/Musical font

Reply #2 – 2010-08-08 07:14 pm

Quote from: Cyber_Hymnal – 2010-08-08 07:04 pm

Is this an NWC2 bug?

Not really. The dialog may support Unicode, but NoteWorthy does not.
Lawrie Pardy has created very nice fonts for chords. See his homepage for details.

If you have updated to NWC 2.1 and have the CD, Lawrie's fonts are on it.

Re: Need Alphabetic/Musical font

Reply #3 – 2010-08-08 08:08 pm

I am very happy with the Tekton Pro font (commercial), or alternatively Technical font (free). The letter "b" is adequate for representing the flat-sign.

In one of the discussions I found the tric to enter chord-symbols as text in a seperate Staff, staff placement top. It is the fastest way to do the job, in my experience.

Re: Need Alphabetic/Musical font

Reply #4 – 2010-08-08 11:20 pm

If you visit my homepage you will find a "DoSi/Germanic" supplement for my font suites. This contains exactly what you're looking for.

The particular font will be called: SwingChordDoSi, MusikChordSansDoSi or MusikchordSerifDoSi each being a different typeface, the latter being very close to the NWC default fonts.

They include Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti as well as correctly formed flat and sharp symbols. La is placed by using the keyboard key "A", Ti with "B", Do with "C" etc. This allows Andrews Text chord transposition user tool to work correctly.