Changing score 'look'

• Nov 2, 2012 - 16:01

Is there any way I can make my score in MuseScore look like an older score?
Modern scores look very sharp and clean, which I somehow don't like very much.

I'd like to make my MuseScore scores come out something like this one -
http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/44181

Lilypond isn't the answer either, IIUC, plus it's a headache to use regardless of frontend etc.

Thanks.

Comments

• Nov 2, 2012 - 18:11

Hard to say exactly what aspect of that score you are talking about, but MuseScore does let you use whatever text fonts you have on your system, so if your have a font that can produce titles and markings that resemble the ones in your sample, go to Style / Edit Text Style and have a ball. You can then save an empty score to use as a template, or save the style itself.

As for the notes themselves, MuseScore has only its one built in font. For 2.0, there will be two choices, but without knowing what in particular you are looking for (the "slanted" clef? the fatter beams?) it's hard to know if the new font will be more to your liking or not. But do note that beam thickness and certain other properties can be controlled by Styel / Edit General Style.

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• Nov 2, 2012 - 18:20

lasconic generously provided some solutions on IRC, paraphrasing them here to help anyone else -

-Play with General Style - to make the beams thicker, for example.

-Change musical font - will be possible in v2.0, try nightly builds in the meantime. Fonts like Gonville may help - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/gonville/

-Export as PNG file, and use GIMP-fu - apply Gaussian Blur, or try the steps here -
http://www.xach.com/gimp/tutorials/rough.html

Thanks, lasconic! :D

Edit - Marc, sorry I wasn't specific, I mainly referred to the organic quality - the imperfect printing look, and beam width. Thank you for your input.

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• Nov 3, 2012 - 10:40

Style
If you like -- as I do myself -- a slightly heavier look for your scores (also easier to read in suboptimal light conditions), you may find useful the attached style file, which I use regularly with ver. 1.2.

To use it, once you have created the score, use the "Style | Load style..." menu command to import it into your score. Please keep in mind that any modification is score-specific: no global programme setting is modified.

This style only touches at a few parameters, namely: bar width, end bar width, stem width, staff line width, ledger line width and beam width. As the style file itself is pure text, you may fine tune it yourself (by trials and errors! All values are in sp units) and load it again into the score.

Some of the parameters cannot be accessed through the user interface of ver. 1.2; so, using a style file is the only way. Also to go back to default values, if you need: another style file is attached with the programme default values.

Musical font
Using a different musical font is not a trivial task, as a lot of details have to be provided and have to match. Even in the forthcoming ver 2.0, things will not be so easy. Gonville is already included in ver. 2.0; I personally find the MuseScore default font (Emmenthal) much better, but this is of course a matter of personal taste. The point is: do not expect miracles in this area...

HTH,

M.

Attachment Size
style_12_mybold.mss 484 bytes
style_12_default.mss 486 bytes

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