Tech: Musical symbols

Subject: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 04:23 PM

I know I asked thise awhile back but is there a program out there for inserting musical symbols into text like you would with wingdings for microsoft word? If so, I could really use it. It might actually help me get my Civil War songbook published. Kindest regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From:
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 04:28 PM

Neil, have a look at this:

Bach

Is that what you are looking for? Or are you trying to including a music score into a Word Document?

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From:
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 04:31 PM

Also, you might do a search on Truetype Fonts. I came across this web-site for downloadable fonts:

Raymark's Windows Font Resources

Perhaps that might help.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 05:11 PM

If you're just wanting to put a few symbols in, you may find Anastasia (TrueType) already on your machine.

On newer machines, one or two of your fonts may be "full" Unicode, and able to print a few strange characters. "Arial Unicode" may be on your install disks, although it doesn't normally install in a default setup - because it's rather large. You can enter the "code" on the Number Pad while holding the Alt key, and you may get something. The problem is in identifying the correct code for the few characters you want.

If you've used any notation program, there's a good chance that you have some, or all of the TrueType fonts:
Frets A
Frets B
Frets C
Maestro
Maestro Percussion (Maestro also available as Type 1)
Opus
Opus Chords
Opus Percussion
Opus Special
Opus Text

Be aware that with any of these "music fonts" character size and spacing can be "strange."

Separated individual characters are not too commonly used in text. If you're actually wanting "scraps" of notation, you can zoom in as much as possible in any notation program, Alt-PrtScrn, to capture a picture of what's on the screen, Ctl V to paste it into Word and then crop down to leave just what you want. With some programs, there are better ways of doing it, but the "screen shot" works fairly well with almost any program.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 07:17 PM

here is one that might help...MusicalSymbols.ttf.
RIGHT click on my link and choose "save file as" (or whatever your browser says) and save it to your Windows/fonts folder...then you can use it just like wingdings.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Allan C.
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 07:22 PM

If you plan to submit a digital manuscript you must first be sure that your prospective publisher has the capability to read such an "exotic" font. This is just the sort of thing that drives professional printers up the wall.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 07:23 PM

This are nice, thanks.

I just learned how to use wingdings and the curves in arabic fonts to make nice graphic curves.

Does anyone have a good resource for free fonts that can easily be seen before downloading?

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 07:47 PM

Mary...there are so many free font resources out there it is hard to pick one..here are a few from my old Netscape bookmarks (all working)

http://www.fontage.com/
http://masonboroarts.com/whofonted/categories.html
http://www.fontfreak.com/index2.htm
http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~kikita/
http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/
...and if that isn't enough, work your way thru this fellow's links!

or, I could copy a CD I made with a couple thousand on it..(yeah...I was into it HEAVY several years ago...*sigh*)

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 04 Mar 04 - 09:21 PM

Thanks, I'll check them out.

Several years ago when I needed some, I found that quality sites were hard to come by. I like to see an example of the font (quickly) and navigate through lots of 'em real fast. And of course they have to be free.

I never gave fonts much thought until I wanted to experiment with some different ones. I knew *exactly* what I wanted, but out of the 1000s I saw, none were quite right.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 04:12 PM

Thanks all! I'm looking to put musical scores into a word document and will be sending a hard copy to the publisher. I'll let you know how it works. the idea for the song book is to give a broad range of Civil War songs including music, chords and pictures n addition to the lyrics. Thanks again! You guys are the greatest! Neil

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 04:32 PM

A normal publisher won't thank you for trying to make scores in a word document, so do be sure that they are willing and able to handle copy in a non-industry standard format of that kind. If they are happy with it, fine; but the usual way (and preferable from the point-of-view of quality and ease of use) would be to prepare staff notation in a program designed for producing staff notation, and then supply it to the publisher in native format or as an image file.

Still, I believe that some publishers (Mel Bay being one) will take all sorts of unusual formats. I can't help but feel, though, that staff notation made in Word would look pretty awful. It really isn't meant for things like that.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 05:11 PM

How do you crop a screen print that you've pasted into Word?

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 05 Mar 04 - 05:24 PM

Malcolm:
   Thank you. I hadn't thought of that. Whern I submitted the manscript to the publisher Who was interested a while back they wanted the music but not reading music, i'm a bit lost. I play guitar by ear and with tabulature. Kindest regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Mar 04 - 11:35 AM

Barbara Shaw -

When you click on an image that you've pasted into work, you should get the "Picture" toolbar. It usually "floats" in the middle of the page, but you can drag it to the top toolbar if you like.

If it doesn't pop up automatically, you can go to "View - Toolbars" and click it on.

The Picture toolbar usually has something that looks like a little mountain scene on the left, and about half way across the toolbar, there's what looks like a couple of "overlapping "x"" symbols. That's the "crop" tool. Just click on it, and then look for the little "handles," that look like small squares in each corner and in the middle of each side of the image. Click on the "dots", and drag the edges in to "crop" the picture to the size you want.

When you crop, the parts of the picture that you "cut off" are not immediately erased, so they're still "in the document," and can add quite a bit to the file size if you leave them. When you're satisfied with your adjustments, it's a good idea to click on the icon that looks like a "bucket pouring paint" on the Picture toolbar. That icon opens up a menu with several tabs. Click the "picture" tab, if it doesn't "come up selected" and you should see a button that says "Compress." If you punch that button, the parts of the picture that are not shown get removed, and the "pixel size" of the picture gets adjusted to match the rest of Word.

Note that when you "crop," you're actually changing how much of the picture is shown, by cutting the edges off. Once you have the detail you want you can also resize and move it around using the toolbar. The little bucket icon on the Picture toolbar has most of the "adjustments" you need to position, size, and specify how text "wraps" around the picture. Just choose another of the tabs on the menu that comes up when you click the bucket.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 06 Mar 04 - 04:01 PM

JohnInKansas, thanks so much! I have used WORD forever and never knew that I could edit the picture right in a document, and never even thought about using screen print!

(I won't tell you about how I've printed down a musical score, scanned it and then pasted in the image. Duh.)

When I double click on the picture, the 'draw' tool bar comes up, but I found the 'picture' and 'edit picture' toolbars, neither of which has a compress that I can find. Anyway, I'm now able to crop the picture right in Word, although I can't compress to the new image. Could this be something that was added after Word 97?

Thanks for all your help.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 12:34 AM

Barbara Shaw -

I'm afraid the "compress" utility must have been added after Word97. (I had forgotten that Word97 came out when they were pushing the .wmf filetype that was supposed to make everything automatic.)

There's little harm in not having, or in not using, this feature. The only result is a slight increase in the size of the Word file over what might be obtained with compression.

It does appear that in Word97 the "picture edit" functions are more closely "tied into" the "Draw" utility than in later version. You might find some functions there that would be helpful if you really need to do some minor editing of a screen print; but most of what you're likely to need is right on the Picture toolbar. (You may also run into a tendency for Word to open Draw and convert your image to a "Draw Object" when you double click the image. I do remember doing a lot of cursing over that "feature.") It's been far too long since I've used Word97 on any regular basis for me to advise on details there.

If you're going to do a significant amount of work with images, you really should get some kind of separate image editing program, so that you can crop, touch up, add labels, adjust color, and save/convert various file types for different uses - and do all the editing in a program that makes image work "easy" before you past into Word. There are quite a few good programs available, and for most purposes it doesn't make a lot of difference which you choose. My personal favorite (at the moment) is "Photoshop Elements 2.0." (details and enthusiasm on request.) Although it lists for $69+, I've never seen it for sale without the "$30 rebate," so the net cost is about what you'd pay for many shareware programs (assuming you license them).

If you have something that looks, and prints, ok with your screen shot paste and crop, I wouldn't worry about not finding the "compress" feature, since it does seem to be something added in later versions.

My recollection is that Word97 did a fairly good job on resizing, although I can't say whether it's as good as in newer Word versions (which really do a very good job on re-sizes).

In newer versions, you have a "revert" button that, until you compress, allows you to go back to the original image that you pasted. This means that the original picture, and the one you cropped and resized, are both contained in the Word file until you "compress." Compression not only coverts the pasted-cropped-resized picture to a default bit-spacing, it also throws away the copy of the original picture. Word97 may not save the original(?) in the Word file, which would make it much less "necessary" to clean up.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From: GUEST,bc
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 01:39 AM

There is a software program called Finale that will allow you to score on your word processor. If you are doing a lot of serious composing/transcribing it might be worth the investment.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical symbols
From:
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 12:29 PM

I suggest that you might want Finale Notepad as it is a free program. You save out the music as a graphic file, and you can incorporate it as a picture file in Word. Works beautifully. You can EVEN add the output to an HTML file.

Subject: RE: Tech: Musical Font - Free
From:
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 12:33 PM

Here's mention of a new Music Font for Free.

New Free Font for Notating ITM