13

I'm looking for the typical fonts appearing in classical music scores, like the ones here:

enter image description here

where you can see some Allegretto, and also a leggiero, some numbers too, and mf.

And also, what fonts are those used in software like Sibelius, Encore... that looks like Real Book's handwritten font?

enter image description here

4
  • 2
    The hand-drawn lettering on the bottom music sheet looks to be actually hand written and not a font as you can see that letters that appear more than once don't match up, like 'O', 'E' and 'N'.
    – SaturnsEye
    May 14, 2014 at 9:13
  • 5
    @SaturnsEye its possible to have a font that changes the ligature as you type so that it would cycle trough different variations of letters making it seem more natural.
    – joojaa
    May 14, 2014 at 11:50
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    @joojaa oh right, I've never heard of letters cycling before. News to me! :)
    – SaturnsEye
    May 14, 2014 at 13:09
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    @joojaa ;) In fact I asked about that here. I don't know if that example is handwritten or not, but I know that font exists in music sheet editors, and it wouldn't be very difficult for me to find that one.
    – Andrestand
    May 15, 2014 at 8:06

6 Answers 6

11

I believe that the "Allegretto" is a bold Times New Roman.

enter image description here

9

One of the more popular music notation software programs is Finale (at least that was the case when I was in high school). Finale is bundled with a bunch of fonts that you'll recognize if you use sheet music with any kind of regularity:

  • Broadway Copyist Font
  • Engraver Font
  • Finale Alpha Notes Font
  • Finale Copyist Text Font
  • Finale Lyrics Font
  • Finale Mallets Font
  • Finale Numerics Font
  • Finale Percussion Font
  • Jazz Font
  • Maestro Font

These cover pretty much all musical notation you could ask for. For lettering specifically, look to these:

Finale Copyist Text
enter image description here

JazzText
enter image description here

Broadway Copyist Text
enter image description here

MaestroTimes
enter image description here

Not sure if these exact fonts are available for licensing outside of the software.

Reference:

Finale Character Sets

Finale Alternative Music Fonts

1

Steinberg has made available a number of very complete, SMuFL-compatible music sheet fonts, of which Bravura (in OTF, SVG, WOFF & EOT format)

Bravura

and Petaluma (1350 glyphs)

Petaluma

are freely available under the SIL Open Font License.

0

It's not difficult to find some "jazz fonts" in the internet:

Sibelius software uses Jazz Inkpen:

enter image description here

Also: JazzFont.com.

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0

The handwritten example uses a number of fonts:

The violin clef: RussMusic (see https://elbsound.studio/music-font-comparison.php?font=RussMusic )

The time signature: probably a text font, could be AshAlpha (from the AshMusic font, same publisher as RussMusic)

The rests look like from a NorFont (RealScore, BopMusic, etc.), see https://www.facebook.com/norfonts .

The chords and the song title is probably handwritten, too many deviations between similar characters. An overview of handwritten text fonts for this jazz style can be found here: https://elbsound.studio/text-fonts-free-download.php#handwritten

It's possible to create this look in Finale. Examples are available here: https://elbsound.studio/realbook-look.php#examples

0

Simplified Arabic Fixed, this is common in typed simplified sheet music.

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