Custom Font or Symbols for Uploaded Scores

• Mar 19, 2022 - 00:00

A few harmonica tablature fonts exist, providing clear direction for students of the harmonica.

Perhaps the most prominent now are those developed by Winslow Yerxa, the author of the "Harmonica for Dummies" and "Blues Harmonica for Dummies" books, and a prominent ambassador of the harmonica community.

For Diatonic and Chromatic harmonica, his fonts allow students and teachers to notate harmonica tablature accurately.

He sells his fonts here:
https://winslowyerxa.com/articles/hip-the-harmonica-information-publica…

I would strongly encourage you to reach out to Winslow about an opportunity to licence his font, or a derivation, for use on Musescore.

I've produced my own "jazz" alternative for the handouts I create for my students, but Winslow's "Fletch Diatonic" font is much more complete than mine and would be the better choice.

Alternatively, you could add the relevant symbology to the master pallet. There are approximately nine arrow symbols placed above or beside a hole number. Many of the additional symbols are articulation, grace-note, glissandi, etc., many of which are already well approximated in the master pallet.

(A separate but related feature.)
Downward bends, precisely like what is available for guitars, but downward as many as four semi-tones, would also be welcomed. These behave much like what reed woodwind players have been asking for already, but with that extended downward range.

Thanks for your consideration.


Comments

AFAIK you can only expect to see new symbols appearing in MuseScore if such symbols have already been added to SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout). Read about SMuFL here:
https://www.smufl.org/

So the necessary first step is to get these new symbols adopted by the developers of SMuFL.

In reply to by DanielR

I do like the idea of working with SMuFL to recognize the most widely accepted symbols for Diatonic and Chromatoc harmonicas. However, I recognize the time it take to achieve.

The beauty of the fonts that I mentioned, is that they allow tabs to be typed into any text field rather easily, as the layout of the harmonica can be relatively well mapped to match a standard qwerty keyboard. This reduces extra key strokes and modifiers, and speeds up the process dramatically, without requiring a user to remap their keyboard when switching from tab fields to other text, and without interrupting the use of default MuseScore shortcuts.

Still working out the kinks here.

https://musescore.com/user/36992052/scores/7762466/s/6atahA?share=copy_…

(Pardon the absurd rhythmic choices, I was just messing around to see what things would look like on the various staves.)

Tabbing for the Diatonic Harmonica "could" be pretty easy... this shows you where it could be. That middle staff is probably not necessary, but the third staff is the "tab" staff I'm working on.

The ability to map the numbers in Tabs for each "string" of an instrument would allow us to use whatever character we wanted to represent those spaces, but still, have it update automatically along with the main staff, without the need for a plugin. It would also be playable on MuseScore.com when uploaded. A variety of advantages.

As a side note, the folks who play things like the Mountain Dulcimer would be happy with this functionality as well. It would accomplish exactly what they need for the Diatonic fretts including the + frets or bent fret notes. I know that there have been a number of requests for that feature over the past several years.

Attachment Size
Linked Harmonica Tab Test.mscz 166.96 KB

In reply to by WoozleHarmonicas

On a related note, I would usually use an Ottava to bring everything back down for those last two bars, but the tab numbers shift down along with it. I know that this is a known bug, as I found it in the forums, but have not seen any updates on it for the past couple of years.
The workaround with using a second voice for the upper octave and then making it invisible becomes quite tedious, so a fix would be appreciated.
This bug causes issues with the existing Harmonica Tab plugin as well.

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