Fonts

The Default Music Font defines which font is used for notational elements like noteheads, rests, tablature, accidentals, key signatures, time signatures, and articulations in a document. Finale's default documents use one of MakeMusic's SMuFL-compliant default fonts, Finale Maestro or Finale Broadway. If you choose not to use one of these fonts, you can substitute any other SMuFL music font, but you cannot change it to a non-SMuFL font (and vice versa). Any new articulations added to the document will display using the selected font, but existing articulations will not be changed. Text elements will also not be changed. See To globally change a single musical element’s font and To change the chord font.

Noteman says: If you intend to use a third-party music font (that is not SMuFL-compliant), you must add it to Finale's list of symbol fontsA Symbol font, with regards to Finale, is a font that is not re-encoded when a document is opened cross-platform. Maestro is a symbol font. It has exactly one encoding (character #247 always equals the same symbol regardless of platform). Some characters in non-Symbol Fonts (such as Times) are encoded differently on Windows than on Mac (for example, character #247 on Mac may be represented by #233 on Windows). Finale detects files that were last saved across platform and must re-encode all non-symbol fonts. MacSymbolFonts.txt is a list of all Symbol Fonts. Finale refers to MacSymbolFonts.txt while re-encoding to ensure no font listed in MacSymbolFonts.txt is re-encoded.. To do so, see Configuring MacSymbolFonts.txt.

1. Choose Document > Set Default Music Font. The Font dialog box appears.
2. Choose the new font/style and click OK.

   SMuFL fonts should not require manual adjustments but, if you use a non-SMuFL font, you may have to fine-tune the positions of individual elements, such as the eighth-note flags; select the element's corresponding category in the Document Options dialog box to make global adjustments to this element as needed.

With this technique, you can change the font for a single notational element of the music, such as the clefs or the notes themselves. If you want to change all elements of the music to a different font, see To change the Default Music Font of a document .

1. Choose Document > Document Options > Fonts. The Document Options - Fonts dialog box appears, with buttons and pop-up menus for various elements of the file.

   The Set Font button refers to the font used for the notes, rests, accidentals, and other musical symbols; if you use this button to substitute a non-SMuFL font or a music font not included with Finale, you’ll need to make some adjustments to music characters in the Document Options dialog box. Finale makes the necessary adjustments automatically if you choose a SMuFL-based font or MakeMusic legacy font like Maestro, Engraver, Broadway Copyist, Jazz, or Petrucci as your default music font.

2. From the Notation pop-up menu on the left, choose the type of music character you want to change. Accidentals, Alternate Notation, Augmentation Dots, Flags, Key Signatures, Notes, and Rests are all possible options.
3. Click the Set Font button to display the Font dialog box, where you can select the font name, type, and point size. The sample text changes in the display based on your selections. You can choose any combination of style elements: bold, italic, and so on.
4. Click OK to save your settings in the Font dialog box.
5. Click Apply and OK to return to your document and view your changes.

Some newly added items, like articulations and chord suffixes, will display using the selected font but existing items will not be changed.

When the Default Music Font is changed, font elements like chords are not updated. Follow these instructions to change the font used for chord symbols, suffixes, alterations, and fretboards.

1. To change the chord font, choose Document > Document Options and select Fonts. The Document Options - Fonts dialog box appears.
2. Choose Chord > Symbol. Click Set Font and choose the desired chord font, like JazzCord.
3. Click OK to save your settings in the Font dialog box.
4. Click Apply and OK to return to your document.
5. Choose the Chord tool . The Chord menu appears.
6. Choose Chord > Change Chord Suffix Fonts. The Change Chord Suffix Fonts dialog box appears.
7. To change the entire library of chord suffixes at once, click the Set Font button in the Replace With section. The Font dialog box appears, letting you specify new font, size, and style characteristics for the suffixes.

   For best results, be sure that the Fix Chord Suffix Spacing checkbox is selected, so that Finale automatically adjusts the individual characters in each chord suffix to compensate for the new font and size.

8. Click OK to save your settings in the Font dialog box.
9. Click OK to confirm the settings in the Change Chord Suffix Fonts dialog box and return to your document. The chord suffixes are updated based on your selected changes.

   Finale does not change any musical symbols within the suffix, such as the in F79. You can import a chord suffix library to access suffixes with the correct musical symbols.

You can use the Font Utilities dialog box to change every occurrence of one font and size to another, no matter where they occur — in symbol libraries, in text, in chord symbols, and so on. See also Change Fonts plug-in.

1. Choose Document > Data Check> Font Utilities. The Font Utilities dialog box appears.
2. Check Search for This Font to specify the font to be replaced and the font to replace it with, and click OK.

With this technique, you can scale every occurrence of a certain font that’s used in your document to a larger or smaller font size, no matter what size was used in each occurrence, by percentage. For example, you could tell Finale to scale every occurrence of New York 24-point down to 12-point by 50%. In so doing, Finale would also scale New York 36-point down to 18-point, and New York 10-point down to 5-point.

1. Choose Document > Data Check > Font Utilities.
2. Check Search for This Font and specify the font, style and/or size you want to be changed.
3. Select Scale Font Size To to define the percentage you want the specified font to be scaled to. If you want text included as part of a shape expression scaled, make sure Apply Changes to Fonts in Shapes is checked.
4. Click OK.

To use Tamburo, Maestro Percussion, or JazzPerc for your percussion notation, assign it as the notehead font in each staff or as the document’s default notehead font. Then, take advantage of Finale’s built-in percussion libraries or create one of your own, so that notes you enter on a percussion staff automatically assign themselves to appropriate lines or spaces with the correct noteheads.

Noteman says: If you are using a SMuFL-based font, it may not be necessary to use a different font for percussion noteheads. These glyphs are included in MakeMusic's SMuFL-compliant fonts.

1. Choose the Staff tool . Double-click within the staff. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears.
2. Under Independent Elements, check the Notehead Font checkbox if it is not already selected.
3. Click Select to display the Font dialog box and choose the new font.
4. Click OK to save your settings in the Font dialog box.
5. Click OK in the Staff Attributes dialog box to return to your document. The selected font is now being used for noteheads while other elements such as flags and clefs are taken from the default music font(s)

Finale stores a font list with each document you create. The list contains the fonts that were available to Finale when the document was created. If you notice that some font names are listed as missing in the font selection boxes of a certain document, it’s because those fonts were present when the document was created (or previously edited) but are no longer installed. Use these steps to remove the names of missing fonts from any font selection dialog box.

1. Choose Document > Data Check > Font Utilities. The Font Utilities dialog box appears.
2. Select Check Document Fonts Against System Fonts and click OK.
3. Open a font selection dialog box. Finale has removed the names of the missing fonts.

If, when you open Finale, you see strange symbols on the screen where music notes should be, you can restore your music fonts by following the instructions in this Knowledge Base article.