On May 30, 2009, at 4:03 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Having written a fair amount of music by hand in my earlier years and
performed more, I fail to understand why folks want a handwritten
font. I
understand that some think that it contributes to a more stylistic
reading
of some music, but that just doesn't make sense to me.
Perhaps if you observed it in two successive readings of essentially
the same music, but with a different presentation, it would make more
sense to you. I think musicians react to what they see. Hand-copied
music of a certain style brings out familiar aspects of the music to
some musicians. We all want to make the correct impression on the
musicians reading our music, and an inkpen font helps that.
Sometimes.
In some ways.
To me, it seems like photographers trying to digitally insert the
appearance of grain in grainless digital files so it will look like
film.
We spent years trying to minimize grain from film and now that
that's no
longer necessary, some folks want it back. I don't get it.
Possibly for the same reason introducing "noise" into lines and
images - blurring them - makes them easier on the eye and thus easier
to read. Antialiased text on your computer screen is an excellent
example. The fog machine that they used when shooting scenes (usually
TV) to videotape in the early days of digital video is another. But
that is not really the point I am trying to make here.
Maybe it's because Marshall Mcluhan was Canadian (as I am) that I see
his "the message is the medium" everywhere, but it is particularly
evident in computer-assisted engraving. Nobody foresaw that having
perfectly regular engraved-type notation would cause musicians to
treat the written part as more authoritative than hand-written music,
and in music where the written part is more of a suggestion than an
order, like jazz, it would get in the way of the performance.
But it did. I was as surprised as anyone to observe that effect and
struggled to understand it, and I think I have a handle on it.
BTW, the message in the medium thingy was thoroughly explored in the
film "Helvetica", a documentary about a typeface, for pete's sake!
Why should a less-readable font communicate something more clearly
than the most perfectly readable, neutral font ever? It does, without
question. And the "neutral" font communicates a whole lot of
authority, which you may or may not want.
I didn't even start to address subjects like character boldness and
how it affect readability, certain important items like time
signatures and repeats being more evident in hand-written styles, and
the lack of specialised jazz markings in the Engraver and Maestro
fonts. But they are reasons to prefer specialised hand fonts, too.
Not trying to start a fight, just making an observation.
Richard Smith
No fight started. I always welcome a civilised discussion, especially
on topics that affect us all.
Christopher
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