As far as what font I use, it's a mixture of Maestro and Engraver and some others for the default music font (I made my own). My Chord fonts took over a year to develop with the help of several A-list session players in LA who have seen just about everything. My only goal was to make something compact yet easy to read...especially for those of us over 45 (you know who you are and why I bring that up).
My mantra for notation is this and this only: "Be impossible to misunderstand." I don't care about "tradition". I am not a music notation historian and I refuse to go down that road for the sake of tradition only, as some traditional practices frankly stink. As you all have made very clear, music notation still has a bit of growing to do, and the advent of electronic notation has opened a new can of worms.
I would like to be a part whatever is going on and to help make things better for all of us. And, I am looking forward to getting to know you all better, as I have not had the privilege of being with my peers for some time. Thanks for this.
Bill Duncan
I agree with what Chuck is saying here. I too use the Maestro font for Jazz Charts....unless a client absolutely insists that I use the Jazz font. The Jazz font doesn't look as professional in my opinion. I have shape expressions for scoops etc. that I use.
I don't own any of Bill Duncan's fonts but I visited his site the other day and I must say, that is some of the most beautiful Finale work that I have ever seen. It doesn't get any clearer than that! Beautiful work Bill!
FWIW
Karen
Just for the record, I have said before that I prefer the Maestro/Duncan combination to the jazz font (and any other hand written style font I've seen), even with the scoops, bends and fall-offs from the jazz font when they are necessary. Please, no flames. This is just one person's preference - based on considerable experience, but still, just an opinion. If Bill is able to come up with a set of jazz articulations (not so many, really) that look as if they belong to Maestro, I'll be happy enough.
I do like fonts, and design, and elements that ad beauty and interest to the graphic representation of music, but in the end, it's clarity and ease of communication of the musical idea that trumps everything else for me, and I find Maestro less distracting than the Jazz font. If Eric is counting votes in this informal poll, David Berger falls into the camp that doesn't like the Jazz font. He thinks it looks like the work of a bad copyist.
Chuck
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