What’s wrong with the Leland Font in MuseScore?

[LSL2026]

Convince me Leland is great :-D

I kind of feel that it’s “utilitarian” if you know what I mean. It does the job, but there’s no “elegance” to it.

Maestro, “with a few things fixed” is really my dream font.

I think my biggest niggles for Maestro are the 8th etc. rests - they’re a bit big - and the accents, which are large and open wider than a lot. And then there are the flags, OMG the flags. And the flats could be better. But overall I’m really happy with it, and could live with those things.

Leland fixes those things, but at the expense of having some other issues - the biggest for me is the size of staccato dots - I’ve seen scores online and I go “why are they so small” - and unfortunately you can’t adjust them independently from the other articulations - only make all articulations bigger or smaller (by a percentage). The time signatures are also a bit dark.

MuseScore automatically changes the staff, ledger, stem, and barline widths when you change the font so it’s hard to compare Maestro directly (and if anyone has some good settings for MS to make Maestro look better overall, I’m all ears).

I started looking through other “based on Score” kinds of fonts.

I’ve been through the fonts at Elbsound, and they all have issues that are more problematic for me - weird breath marks, leany treble clefs, squished harmonic diamond noteheads, or “0” harmonics instead of “o” harmonics…gaps between time signature numerals, weird looking 1/4 rests, and so on.

Scorlatti was looking good until I saw the breath marks…(and note, I’m not saying they’re bad or wrong, they’re just not to my taste).

I think it’s possible to make some of your own symbols in MS - I might be able to make a single curly apostrophe and size it right, and copy and paste that as I need it - I guess I could always take a period, and make it bigger, and manually place it over top of every staccato - no, I’m too lazy for that

But if you know fonts that are closer to Score, or like Leland that I can try out, that’d be great too. I can’t seem to find much info on Leland online and it’s not at Elbsound.

TIA for any help/opinions you can provide.

[benwiggy]

I started looking through other “based on Score” kinds of fonts.

TBH, the character shapes of SCORE weren't its greatest feature. They weren't smooth vectors, and often had missing "chunks" cut out of them -- particular on curves and circles.

There are much better examples of music symbols in the best plate engraving of the early 20th century.

[OCTO]

There was a rendering of SCORE to fonts Vienna for Finale and Wolfgang for Sibelius.

[tisimst]

Just out of curiosity, for the symbols you dislike in these other fonts, do you have genuine SCORE specimens that show the same symbols more favorably?

[odod]

Screenshot 2026-06-07 at 22.12.59.png (980.61 KiB) Viewed 1354 times

That is why I am using my own developed music font instead, with a bit of Henle's style
Leland clef it does not look like SCORE exactly .. I think Partita is the closest one, too bad I don't have it

[benwiggy]

I have Partita. As it was made directly from SCORE, all the curves are made up of little straight lines!

Screenshot 10.png (320.43 KiB) Viewed 1351 times

It was made by Arun Konanur, under the "Really Loud Font Company" name. I can find no reference to that company anymore, and the name is only cited as a prominent geneticist. (Could be the same guy, I suppose.)

As it seems to be "abandonware", do send me a message if you'd like to know more about it.

[LSL2026]

There are much better examples of music symbols in the best plate engraving of the early 20th century.

And those would be?

[LSL2026]

There was a rendering of SCORE to fonts Vienna for Finale and Wolfgang for Sibelius.

So are you saying that the font Vienna basically “is” what Score used, and one would have been able to use it in Finale?

I’ve seen Vienna at Elbsound, so are you saying if I look at that that should give me a good idea of what Score looks like?

[LSL2026]

Just out of curiosity, for the symbols you dislike in these other fonts, do you have genuine SCORE specimens that show the same symbols more favorably?

When you say “specimens” do you mean actual scores done with Score?

That’s something I’m curious about - most of my collection at home is from old hand-engraved stuff - Schirmer scores, etc.

I’m curious to know which publishers used Score and seeing some actual PDF examples.

[LSL2026]

That is why I am using my own developed music font instead, with a bit of Henle's style
Leland clef it does not look like SCORE exactly .. I think Partita is the closest one, too bad I don't have it

So is this Leland with some alternate symbols?

Rests look different. You’ve swapped out the treble clef?