On Oct 23, 2005, at 10:33 PM, bill wrote:
Hi guys,
Chuck, would you like to be my sales rep??? hehehe You are so
kind to talk
about my stuff the way you do.
You're welcome, - it's just the way I feel. Finale makes things
easier for me that used to be difficult - editing and changing music
to suit new circumstances. I face this situation all the time, and
computer based notation is a boon. Your work adds elegance and some
convenience. Simple as that. (BTW, I feel smart in having figured
out how to adapt one of your smart lines, the one with a beginning
text, middle continuation and ending, from one that goes above the
staff to one that goes under.)
I had a thought about about a new articulations font:
From what I am hearing, there are not a lot of jazz articulations
needed, so
I am thinking about an all-inclusive "Articulations" font that
contains
everything (both jazz and legit). There seems to be plenty of
slots in the
font to accommodate them all. I don't know about you all, but I'm
still not
satisfied with any of the out-of-the-box articulations in the fonts
that MM
supplies. Maybe I could put together an articulations font that
all of us
agree with for everything and be done with it.
This would suit my needs just fine. I think Christopher, and others
who use the Jazz Font, may have more extensive needs. Since I don't
use that font, what I am looking for is a set of a few things that
are common to jazz notation that would look appropriate in Maestro.
I only use three of the Jazz Font articulations at the moment.
Replacing these with shapes that seemed to belong to Maestro would
satisfy me. I agree with Chris that the curved fall-off looks
strange in the way it curves back on itself, and I'd probably have
picked a more curved shape instead of the nearly straight one I use,
if the curves weren't so extreme. I am happy enough choosing among
the various Finale fonts for other articulations, but I understand
Christopher's point of view about the things he mentions in the Jazz
Font library and agree with it.
For what it's worth, I'm not really interested in doing the work
unless it
can be "the definitive" font for articulations, so I guess I'm
asking for
input from anyone here. I trust you guys way more than those who
influence
MM's "artistic" decisions, and I admit that I don't know
everything...especially with jazz articulations.
As far as the jazz chords font, could someone send me a scanned
page of
anything (containing lots of chords, of course) from Sher Music
Co's "The
Standards Real Book"? If it's not for sale, I'm not really in a
position to
get it. Also, if anyone has anything else that they feel particularly
strongly about, I'd love to see them too.
Many folks like this look, and I think it's OK. It has become a
standard partly because of its clarity and partly (I think) as a
result of its association with the high level of accuracy and general
integrity of Chuck Sher's publications. I prefer the look of your
chord font, and I think we may be frustrated in trying to get a hand
written font out of a machine. The more I think about it, the more
it seems to me that my eye understands that the built in purposeful
imperfection of a computer produced "hand looking" character will be
the same every time it is printed, and there's an intuitive
dissonance to that. Seeing the controlled inconsistency of beautiful
hand copying is something else altogether, and we may not be able to
get a machine to produce that illusion.
Here are the jazz articulations I use.
They are not terrible, but not good either, and they don't match the
consistency of Maestro. I haven't been able to figure out how to get
the handle positions set on the first two so that they will be placed
automatically, so entering them is always a clumsy process. The
third one places itself correctly. I'd prefer a scoop symbol that
was a little longer - approximating the horizontal length of the fall-
off, and a fall off that curved a little more, and though I like
relatively bold looking notation, these are a little too bold in
proportion to other elements. I'm sure Christopher and Darcy will
weigh in on this, and I welcome their input.
All the best! I'm getting excited about this...
That's nice to hear.
Best regards,
Chuck
Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com
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