If I recall correctly, Tantacrul had made some videos on design for music composition software (like this one on Sibelius). His video on MuseScore got MuseScore's attention and now he works there...
If I recall correctly, Tantacrul had made some videos on design for music composition software (like this one on Sibelius). His video on MuseScore got MuseScore's attention and now he works there as head of design.
Edit: Just watched the whole video. This was a particularly good one, and I honestly would've loved even more painstaking detail on the choices that went into this design, even though I have no use for music scoring software. I'd love to see something similar about math fonts like those used for typesetting equations in LaTeX, since that's even more applicable to my everyday life.
Looks great. The music and text fonts fit together very nicely and I think the symbol weights look very natural. I tried the new fonts and layout algorithms on some of my scores and it's all a...
Looks great. The music and text fonts fit together very nicely and I think the symbol weights look very natural.
I tried the new fonts and layout algorithms on some of my scores and it's all a great upgrade. I'm really excited to compose music with these changes. I look forward to a future where MuseScore's output is good enough for my final engravings!
As Tantacrul mentions, music notation design is really hard because of staff lines, as well as how dense it is. A square centimeter can easily carry a dozen separate elements, and they have to group up visually yet remain legible. It's much higher stakes than text, too, because readers are constantly under time pressure to read each chunk of music.
That reminds me, I should really finish my guide for drawing musical symbols in pencil. Most people don't have the pen nibs you need to draw symbols like you see on the page, and I couldn't find any good resources for pencil/ballpoint drawing when I looked.
Tantacrul also talked about upcoming improvements to engraving (meaning glyph and especially layout considerations), and I'm very excited for those. The standard reference for both and other questions of notation is Behind Bars (Elaine Gould), which first got me interested in the details of notation.
Dorico and SMuFL have been incredibly important for the development of modern computer notation programs.
Here's an image album of some differences. In the first example, obviously the text font changed, but also the inline half note glyph became a more natural size and shape. In the second example,...
In the first example, obviously the text font changed, but also the inline half note glyph became a more natural size and shape.
In the second example, the old version crushed the upper flag right into the chord. The new version lets the stem be longer even though it's waaaaay off the staff, which reads much better. Also the lower flag now connects to the note head.
In the third example, the sharp and natural signs were very big — three full staff spaces high. This prevented them from getting too close, which shifted the natural sign far away from the note head. The new version has lighter and shorter accidental signs, which allow them to get nice and cozy, so they read as a single chord.
In the fourth example, the sharps in the key signature were visually quite dense. The lighter sharp signs in the new version are more visually separate and easier to read at a glance. You can also see the changes in the clef shapes and staff brace. Especially note the bass clef, which grew ½ a staff space, making its shape less like a circle, and more like the treble clef.
I would have liked to see a comparison between his font and the default Lilypond font which I consider to be the best when it comes to digital engraving.
I would have liked to see a comparison between his font and the default Lilypond font which I consider to be the best when it comes to digital engraving.
At this level of zoom I don't think they can really be compared. Neither is objectively better. To have the best comparison, someone would need to set a whole piece, and then probably copy...
At this level of zoom I don't think they can really be compared. Neither is objectively better.
To have the best comparison, someone would need to set a whole piece, and then probably copy LilyPond's line breaks into MuseScore.
Personally, I find the meatier symbols of Feta to be easier to read, and more appropriate for classical music. Sometimes with newer scores I have to squint a little to read a chord all at once. But some of that is more about spacing than the symbols. And anyway I've been reading Henle and Bärenreiter scores for long enough to be biased/used to that.
If I recall correctly, Tantacrul had made some videos on design for music composition software (like this one on Sibelius). His video on MuseScore got MuseScore's attention and now he works there as head of design.
Edit: Just watched the whole video. This was a particularly good one, and I honestly would've loved even more painstaking detail on the choices that went into this design, even though I have no use for music scoring software. I'd love to see something similar about math fonts like those used for typesetting equations in LaTeX, since that's even more applicable to my everyday life.
Looks great. The music and text fonts fit together very nicely and I think the symbol weights look very natural.
I tried the new fonts and layout algorithms on some of my scores and it's all a great upgrade. I'm really excited to compose music with these changes. I look forward to a future where MuseScore's output is good enough for my final engravings!
As Tantacrul mentions, music notation design is really hard because of staff lines, as well as how dense it is. A square centimeter can easily carry a dozen separate elements, and they have to group up visually yet remain legible. It's much higher stakes than text, too, because readers are constantly under time pressure to read each chunk of music.
That reminds me, I should really finish my guide for drawing musical symbols in pencil. Most people don't have the pen nibs you need to draw symbols like you see on the page, and I couldn't find any good resources for pencil/ballpoint drawing when I looked.
Tantacrul also talked about upcoming improvements to engraving (meaning glyph and especially layout considerations), and I'm very excited for those. The standard reference for both and other questions of notation is Behind Bars (Elaine Gould), which first got me interested in the details of notation.
Dorico and SMuFL have been incredibly important for the development of modern computer notation programs.
Here's an image album of some differences.
In the first example, obviously the text font changed, but also the inline half note glyph became a more natural size and shape.
In the second example, the old version crushed the upper flag right into the chord. The new version lets the stem be longer even though it's waaaaay off the staff, which reads much better. Also the lower flag now connects to the note head.
In the third example, the sharp and natural signs were very big — three full staff spaces high. This prevented them from getting too close, which shifted the natural sign far away from the note head. The new version has lighter and shorter accidental signs, which allow them to get nice and cozy, so they read as a single chord.
In the fourth example, the sharps in the key signature were visually quite dense. The lighter sharp signs in the new version are more visually separate and easier to read at a glance. You can also see the changes in the clef shapes and staff brace. Especially note the bass clef, which grew ½ a staff space, making its shape less like a circle, and more like the treble clef.
Tantacrul has many very interesting videos on his channel, and I can highly recommend watching them.
I would have liked to see a comparison between his font and the default Lilypond font which I consider to be the best when it comes to digital engraving.
I do all my proofs in LilyPond! Here are some samples with black note heads. (I had to zoom in so my PDF reader wouldn't do weird aliasing.)
Comparing them like that, I can't tell which one I liked best. I think Lilypond still but maybe not.
At this level of zoom I don't think they can really be compared. Neither is objectively better.
To have the best comparison, someone would need to set a whole piece, and then probably copy LilyPond's line breaks into MuseScore.
Personally, I find the meatier symbols of Feta to be easier to read, and more appropriate for classical music. Sometimes with newer scores I have to squint a little to read a chord all at once. But some of that is more about spacing than the symbols. And anyway I've been reading Henle and Bärenreiter scores for long enough to be biased/used to that.
Direct link to the font's project page: https://github.com/MuseScoreFonts/Leland