MusAnalysis

[Dan Kreider]

I'm almost finished with a new font for Roman numeral and functional analysis. I call it MusAnalysis. The idea is to be able to type everything into Dorico or Finale or Sibelius, without needing to export to Illustrator.



MusAnalysis will be released soon (for free).

My question: what principles do you think are important for the aesthetics of things like analysis? What makes it beautiful (or ugly)? Is there anything from this example you would change?

Thanks!

[John Ruggero]

This could be exceptionally helpful, Dan. Thank you for all the effort that you are putting into these fonts. I think the font itself looks fine.

Can it could do more complex things like what is enclosed in red:

Analysis Example.jpeg (65.88 KiB) Viewed 7832 times

Note the numbers with carets above.

[Dan Kreider]

Thanks for the feedback, John. Yes, numbers with carets are already included, but there are a few things there I can add.

How would you describe this? Functional analysis? Looks a little like Schenker.

[John Ruggero]

It's a pretty typical example from Schenker's Der Freie Satz.

[Dan Kreider]

It's a pretty typical example from Schenker's Der Freie Satz.

Indeed. It’s been 20 years since Schenker for me!

As of this evening, everything in this excerpt is easily achievable in MusAnalysis (except for the funky beams and such... those you have to work out yourself). Thanks.

[John Ruggero]

Fantastic, Dan! I look forward to trying it out.

[OCTO]

Wonderful work!
Questions: is it possible to add (use) all Latin letters? Also, possible to use all super/subscripts? Possible to use symbols under the main symbol?

[Dan Kreider]

All Latin letters are possible, yes. The b I had assigned to the flat symbol (since that’s the most common use), but @b returns the Latin b. Oh, and “n” is natural... I need to adjust that as well...

Unfortunately superscript and subscript are not unlimited, because Dorico does not support full OpenType features, so I have to use contextual alternates and ligatures only. Can you give me an idea of what you would want?

You can put symbols underneath, somewhat. I think the best solution here would be to add a separate line of text (or lyrics), a d then shift it so it appears superimposed. There get to be too many combinations, and the resulting keystrokes become complicated.

[JoshNichols]

If this is as successful as the image provides, this will be the new standard for analysis. Can it do Neo-Riemannian stuff too?

[Dan Kreider]

Indeed, the image is quite legit. The only fudging was drawing the lines as text objects and dragging them into place.

You mean with the little arrows underneath? I’m not really familiar with that sort of thing. Can you link to an example?