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How I Designed a Free Music Font for 5 Million Musicians (MuseScore 3.6)

Tantacrul

465K subscribers • 9 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 5 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2021 to 2024.
  • Presented by Martin Keary, Tantacrul
  • Linked in the descriptionMuseScoreFonts/Leland

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

608K views5 years ago5 recommendations

Graphics and audioHistory and cultureOpen sourceHistory of computingCreative coding

Tantacrul explains the process of designing the Leland music notation font for MuseScore, drawing on the history of the SCORE application.

This video covers how I designed a music notation font for MuseScore 3.6, in collaboration with my friend Simon Smith, a professional engraving expert. Apart from MuseScore's 5 million users, this font is available for free for anyone to download and use. Along the way, I also discuss the inspiration for our font: an application called SCORE, created by Leland Smith. Please consider supporting me on Patreon patreon.com/Tantacrul Twitter twitter.com/tantacrul Discord t.co/a3oYi1Rbnc?amp=1 --- Learn More about Simon oktophonie.net youtube.com/ingemisco --- GET MUSESCORE 3.6 (FREE) musescore.org --- GET OUR MUSIC FONT: LELAND github.com/MuseScoreFonts/Leland --- scoringnotes.com/ --- SCORE & LELAND SMITH Leland interview: namm.org/library/oral-history/leland-smith Scoring Notes Obituary scoringnotes.com/news/leland-smith-dies-at-88/ Stanford Obituary news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/leland-smith-obit-010914… Bill Holab on Leland Smith scoringnotes.com/news/bill-holab-on-leland-smith-and-score/ Thomas Brodhead on Leland Smith scoringnotes.com/news/thomas-brodhead-on-leland-smith-and-sc… ScoreBox scorbox.com/ Machines of Loving Grace (Composition by Leland Smith) youtube.com/watch?v=0bU0rS-n-mM&ab_channel=ccrmalite1 Original History of SCORE (Wayback machine) web.archive.org/web/20190602040203/http://scoremus.com/score…

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Praised as an entertaining and educational look at typography, music notation software history, and the value of open-source licensing.

jamesharton Hacker News • Recommends

On “MuseScore 3.6”

Tantacrul’s video about the creation of the new engraving font ( link to this video ) is also an important story about the MS-DOS Score program, software obsolescence and stewardship, and the loss of value that can happen when an industry relies on proprietary software. Without polemics or politics, this ends up presenting one of the strongest moral arguments for open source licensing.
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Slow_Handon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Olympia Musicwriter”

…pies a nice niche at the intersection of music composition, design, and programming. Also his videos are entertaining as hell. I particularly enjoy his video about the making of a new notation typeface. He does a good job at making the topic of music notation come to life, and also throws in a short history of the program 'Score' for some context: link to this video…
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meowfaceon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Audacity Aquired by Muse Group”

If anyone's curious, here are Tantacrul's entertaining videos on MuseScore and designing MuseScore's new font, and the Audacity video from yesterday: link link to this video link
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jedimasterton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Clairnote: An alternative music notation system”

Tantacrul made a really interesting video about how incredibly difficult it is to make a notation font that might be a good watch0, and I say that to say this: I see an issue here that left me confused for several minutes: the little bit of overlap when a note is attached to a line but not intersecting it looks like an alignment mistake and leaves ambiguity. My recommendation would be to have no overlap, with the top/bottom pixel of the note head in line with the top/bottom pixel of the staff line, like traditional notation. 0: link to this video
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amiga386on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Printing Music with CSS Grid”

…s on the subject than Tantacrul is, but as far as I know, they didn't make long-form Youtube videos about the topic! He also likely got the job of leading the MuseScore redesign thanks to his previous videos that critiqued and reimagined the interfaces of music composition software... including older versions of Sibelius 2 and MuseScore 3) 0 link to this video 1 link 2 link 3 link…
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thristianon Hacker News • Mentions

On “What Is a Music Engraver? (2016)”

It also doesn't mention SCORE1, which is apparently still big among the more conservative music publishers2. 1: link 2: link to this video
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