Making nice white mensural incipits with SMuFL

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Jeffrey Quick Posted February 10, 2021 19:41

Finale 26.3, MacOS 10.15
What I want to do: make really nice-looking incipits in late-16th c. white mensural notation.

What I have: Bravura, and the Medieval 2 plugin (which is a little early for this, and we're not getting along well).

What is working so far: I got and successfully installed MakeLonga.lua. I made replacement clefs from the Bravura clefs.

What is working but badly: I've been using the Change Note Head tool to replace heads with heads from the default Engraver Font Extras. (It's just occurred to me that there should be a way to change that to Bravura, but I haven't found it yet.). It's not quite right, but works. I've also loaded a few symbols into the Articulation library (old cut time etc.) and can attach them to the pitches whose heads I've changed, and move them manually into position.

What doesn't work: I haven't been able to get changenoteheads.lua edited so as to change anything. I can set Bravura as a staff style, but since it doesn't map to Maestro, I get gobbledygook.

What might work: November or Aruvarb. It's not clear to me, reading the literature on either one, how well they handle the extracanonical characters of SMuFL. If using them is easier than what I've been doing, then they'd be worth the money to me, but it' not clear to me that they would be. Likewise, if there were a way to specify note, rest and clef shapes in Unicode.

The solutions don't need to play back. They do need to be production-level, embeddable in a template, and behave reasonably consistently.

What sort of tips and hacks are out there?

3 comments

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Jeffrey Quick Posted February 20, 2021 14:33

I'm going to half-answer my own question, since nobody else has any answers. Here's what I've learned so far:
changenoteheads.lua WILL work with a smallish font set like Mensural1. I haven't gotten it to work with Bravura or Aruvarb; it looks to me like fonts are being substituted. One key issue is accurately entering the glyph number. There's the Font Book number, and the number one gets when one opens the font in the Articulation Designer. The latter number is what one wants. Don't ask me why they're different.

I've had issues with "real" input (entering notes as notes) with some noteheads (esp. semibreve diamonds) not sitting correctly on the line, and with dots getting lost in the staff line.

Currently, here's what I'm doing: entering these symbols as text. In the template I'm using, I have a text block with the commonly used white mensural symbols, which I'm copypasted out of Font Book. I clear my incipit area of rests using Staff Style 18, then copypaste from that text block onto the staff. When I'm done, I delete the text block, since I don't want it to print. One needs to make sure that first system is where one wants it, as the text doesn't travel with the system. This isn't optimal, but it's the best I can do right now.

Related tip: ALWAYS enter musica ficta using the accidental mover, enabling vertical positioning (as opposed to making some text or articulation thing). They play back, and they'll transpose correctly. I'd been leaving them regular size, but they look at little nicer at 85-90%

PETER THOMSEN Posted February 20, 2021 16:21

… When I'm done, I delete the text block, since I don't want it to print. One needs to make sure that first system is where one wants it, as the text doesn't travel with the system …

Your text block is page attached - right?

But a text block can also be measure/staff attached.

If you enter a text block from Scroll View, it will automatically be measure/staff attached - and it will remain measure/staff attached after you have switched to Page View.

When you are in the Text Tool, the Text menu is available in the menu bar.

Try this:

Select a text block handle, and take a good look at the entire Text menu.

You might find something interesting, like e. g.

Frame Attributes…

By The Way:

Instead of using the Text Tool you could also use the Expression Tool.

An expression can be attached to a specific measure/staff, to a specific beat.

Jeffrey Quick Posted February 22, 2021 15:18

Wow! Thank you! This is all helpful. The Expression Tool idea in particular is a real game-changer. I never thought of Expressions as being beat things, because we're usually attaching them visually to a note. Make up a whole library of white mensural (or Saggital, or whatever...) symbols, and I'm good to go.

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