John Ruggero wrote:Braces and clefs are neutral, unchanging elements that should not call attention to themselves as they do in the example. Like most fonts that imitate handwriting, I think that the LSalgueiro example is too active and informal to produce a well-balanced page of engraved polyphonic music that looks like a finished product rather than an improvisation.
I find your comment interesting and I indeed can follow the term "improvisation".
I do hope that with your cultivated and pertinent sense for engraving you will at some point make suggestions for non-traditional fonts for text in a score.
odod wrote:.. i am more of a custom music fonts guy, i dislike maestro and opus or any other default fonts from engraving software. The fact that i’ve collected so many samples from old plate engraving had the intention of learning how those beautiful engraving was done. I mean how they put all the notes and everything evenly without computer is just a masterpiece of a stylistic mind.
Having read several of your threads I like the thoughts you share with your approach and your search and they are usefull to me.
And yes I also find that some old engraving are real piece of art.
On the other side I like that art is changing and I am really curious to see how the engraving art can evolve.
odod wrote:The point is how to make your score easily readable even though its a “complex” composition, but how to put all the pieces together into an art and fits the composers or client’s needs that is all what you need.
Creating art and fitting clients needs sound to me like finding the philosophal stone
tisimst" wrote:That being said, the unanswered question is, does such a “sans serif” design exist for music that maintains that cohesiveness with a nice sans serif text font?
Thanks a lot for this question.
You express what I am asking and searching in a much clearer way than I do
tisimst" wrote:What else should be considered about the general typography? What do we do or expect differently now than what was done in the previous century? Have we improved? What have we lost in the process of becoming “modern”? What is different about laying out music on a page versus text? Are there things we could be taking advantage of that we aren’t? Comparing music and text isn’t completely fair because text can be used in much more isolated, fragmented contexts (like a logo with four letters). Since music is 99% functional and less about grabbing attention, I suppose it would be best to compare a music score with books of text and instruction manuals.
Thanks also for all these questions, again you exactly point to what I try to find out!
tisimst" wrote:Unfortunately, there is a lot of cultural inertia as to what people expect a page of music to look like. It’s hard to change direction (or even be accepted) without some really compelling motivation.
I believe that creating something new that was never there before can be motivation for others to use or to ask for.
If you don't know what can exist then you probably do not ask for it.
Some parts of my music cannot be written in a traditional way because it makes use of some electronic instruments and effects.
Most of the time it is not worth the effort for a client to try to reproduce this kind of music and it is easier to use an audio playback.
Then I notate a staff in the score with instructions like Start Playback or Stop Playback.
But there are some electronic music parts which are sometimes not so difficult to reproduce and for this I think sometimes about finding a (new) way to notate the use of filters, delays and all this kind of sound manipulation.
Trying to be a little pragmatic I spend hours today to search for fonts (sans serif!) for lyrics and for dynamics.
BTW I find this very difficult!
But I noticed something curious: the act of searching and testing did influence very strongly my perception of serif fonts!
My mind was so concentrated on a nice and not to hard looking sans serif font that each time I inadvertantly selected a serif font I was schocked and it was as if the serif font was much too loud!
Of course it was not and I have nothing again serif fonts even if I am searching for alternatives.
But this teaches me again how my perception is extremely dependent of all kind of momentarily impressions and not always really reliable!