Perception of noteheads

[OCTO]

Apropos an earlier post of benwiggy (in another thread) I was thinking about that:

My music tends to use quite small staff sizes, so a larger note head works better for clarity. I did try Maestro Wide, but the difference is slight. I also tried Maestro noteheads at 25pt, but Engraver is my preference.

I am not exactly sure what determines a quick perception of noteheads but in my opinion a good balance between black and white spaces in and is important for quick perception and assimilation of these note-heads (very important for orchestral musicians, and particularly for small staff sizes).
My wife, a singer in the Swedish Radio Choir has noticed that my vocal score made up of Engraver is less pronounceable at the higher staff size than Schumann's score they sang recently which is smaller staff size but with bolder lines and bolder note-heads.

Here are 4 noteheads, which of these notes are the most 'perceptible'? Try using zoom or sit far away from the screen.
(SVG you can open with your browser).

[Knut]

This is difficult to determine out of context and is above all dependent on the thickness of your staff lines. However, against the settings in your screen shot, I prefer the second notehead from the left.

The first notehead, while nicely shaped, require slightly thinner staff lines to be well balanced.
In my personal opinion, the last two noteheads have issues with their shape as well as being too bold for the staff line thickness.

[benwiggy]

For me, on my monitor, in the bitmapped PDF, at 100%, the leftmost is the clearest. If I zoom in, it's pixelated. I'd need to see a vector file printed on paper.
The lefthand note is the largest, and particularly on the line offers the most "hole".

The third one is the worst. You'll tell me that's Engraver now, won't you!

EDIT: Opened the SVG in Illustrator. I see Engraver is the first one! The worst is Sonata.

[tisimst]

This is a great exercise, OCTO. When symbols are intended for print at a small size, two things become important: the contrast between thick vs. thin parts needs to go down (i.e., they need to be more similar, usually by increasing the thickness of thin sections) and the counter (or the interior white space) needs to be maintained so it doesn't get overpowered by the surrounding ink. With those two criteria in mind the second one performs the best, followed by the first. Neither does particularly well on the first criteria, but they do much better than the last two, who's counters seem to shrink considerably, especially in the second set with the staff line passing through them. The second note head does very well on the second criteria since it is much larger than the others, but it lacks the needed weight to maintain presence among the staff lines.

[Knut]

An additional aspect to this which tisimst didn't mention is that noteheads on small staff sized tend to push the limits of size in relation to the staff size, both horizontally and vertically, even more than for larger staff sizes.

Since staff lines become relatively thicker as the staff size decreases, the notehead size does not need to be reduced by exactly the same amount as the staff; they only need to be reduces to the point where they do not go outside the staff lines. This difference may seem marginal, but can be quite substantial at smaller staff sizes, and as a result, the relative size of noteheads is quite a bit larger in e.g., study scores than in instrumental parts.

[benwiggy]

I guess we will soon see different optical weights of music font (Is that what all those Lilypond fonts are for?) to allow for this.

Perhaps the next font format in the future will automatically choose the appropriate stroke width, depending on the actual size that it gets rendered at -- in the same way that OTF now replaces "Expert", "Small Caps", "Cyrillic", etc, but still leaves us with "Caption", "Display", "Subhead", etc.

[tisimst]

I guess we will soon see different optical weights of music font (Is that what all those Lilypond fonts are for?) to allow for this.

Perhaps the next font format in the future will automatically choose the appropriate stroke width, depending on the actual size that it gets rendered at -- in the same way that OTF now replaces "Expert", "Small Caps", "Cyrillic", etc, but still leaves us with "Caption", "Display", "Subhead", etc.

That is precisely what all those LilyPond fonts are for.

Each size is optimized for legibility at a specific size (i.e., 11pt, 13pt, 14pt, 16pt, 18pt, 20pt, 23pt, and 26pt staff size). LilyPond chooses the nearest font size automatically depending on your choice of staff size (default is 20pt).

Doing the same for my own fonts is one of my goals this year.

[John Ruggero]

The second from the left looks like Maestro. In any case, I prefer it by far.

[tisimst]

The second from the left looks like Maestro. In any case, I prefer it by far.

It is Maestro.

Left to right: Engraver, Maestro, Sonata, Vienna

[OCTO]

In my opinion, when printed, I like the most Vienna. I really can read it from a verly large distance.
Sorry for bad settings with lines, I don't have idea why it is so; seems to be to thin.

I guess we will soon see different optical weights of music font (Is that what all those Lilypond fonts are for?) to allow for this.

Perhaps the next font format in the future will automatically choose the appropriate stroke width, depending on the actual size that it gets rendered at -- in the same way that OTF now replaces "Expert", "Small Caps", "Cyrillic", etc, but still leaves us with "Caption", "Display", "Subhead", etc.

That is precisely what all those LilyPond fonts are for.

Each size is optimized for legibility at a specific size (i.e., 11pt, 13pt, 14pt, 16pt, 18pt, 20pt, 23pt, and 26pt staff size). LilyPond chooses the nearest font size automatically depending on your choice of staff size (default is 20pt).

Doing the same for my own fonts is one of my goals this year.

Looking forward!
That is a very important ability which the future notation software should count in.