Ciconia (v 1.6)

Ciconia is a font for expressing 14th and early-15th century music notation. Ciconia is designed to work in any music notation program or to be embedded within double-spaced word processing text.

Ciconia is presented as free for academic use (including usage in papers, handouts, and dissertations). Organizations wishing to use Ciconia in books or journals should contact me at cuthbert@post.harvard.edu for permission. (I've granted permission at no charge every time so far, and will probably again, but I like to be asked...).

Instructions for using Ciconia are available here. (.pdf 40k)
Download the Ciconia font here (PC TTF, default). (You might need to right click the link and choose "Save Target As...")

Other encodings: PC: PC Postscript (v 1.1?)

Mac:
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what works font-wise on a Mac. Some things that worked in OS 10.1 don't work in OS 10.3 any more. I don't personally own a Mac, so it's hard for me to diagnose problems. The most recent version that may work is the Ciconia.otf.dfont version created by Jonathan Shull (from an older version of Ciconia). Please try that. If you get Ciconia to work on your Mac, please let me know what version you used, what OS version you have, and anything else that you needed to do. Other people have found that the .dfont zipped version worked for them.. Some people also report that the PC .ttf font above works for them. Please don't ask me to diagnose the problem on your particular system -- I don't know the answer.

.otf.dfont.zip or unzipped -- recommended (v. 1.1?), or non otf .dfont zipped. Other versions: Mac OS X not otf .dfont unzipped, Mac Classic TTF suit (v 1.0), Mac Classic Postscript (v 1.0).

ClarFinger

ClarFinger is a font I am developing for placing clarinet fingerings into scores. It also includes glyphs for half-holing keys and should have trill keys whenever I end up needing them.

ClarFinger is licensed under the same terms as Ciconia above. Individual composers may use it in their own works, but must get a license (free or fee, depending on how wide of a distribution) to publish pieces using this font. (Oh who am I kidding, I haven't asked anyone for a fee to publish any of my fonts yet--but you still gotta ask before publishing). ClarFinger is not a finished product, and there are no real instructions available.

Make sure you use a large font size. 12 or 24 won't cut it. Try 48 or bigger at least

Download ClarFinger as a TrueType Font or a better version as a zipped Type 1 font.

Really--if you have Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Windows 7 try Type 1 first then TTF.

Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjaerg has converted ClarFinger to an OS X .dfont which seems to work great. Thanks! Command Click to save to disk. If that doesn't work, this Zipped version might: use StuffIt Expander to expand.

Last modified: Feb. 4, 2006 to make the "banana" keys nicer.

Okay, in response to overwhelming popular demand (two emails), a little how it works:

• Press semi-colon. Now you got a blank clarinet. Everything you type after this fills the clarinet.
• press qwerty (all lowercase). Now you can cover the holes on the front.
• z and x are your two next best friends (thumb keys). cvbn will play the side keys (don't play them all at once in real life, kids).
• uiop do the right pinky keys, m,. do the left.
• [ and ] are middle A and G# respectively.
• Shift-D, Shift-F, and Shift-G are the sliver/"banana" keys (Eb-Bb, C#-G#, and B-F#). They look cooler now. A good reason to upgrade.
• The same keys one row up give empty unfingered notes. Handy if you only want to show part of the instrument.
• Shift 1 to 6 half-holes the top fingers.
• Shift-S half-holes the thumb key. That's a bad idea usually, but needed to make some really awful noises.
• What if you don't want all the blank keys? Skip the ; first step. For instance, to get a high Bb in a simpler format, just type: zxqwD3456
• No trill keys yet, sadly.

If it looks bad on screen, it usually prints out fine (or vice-versa... hmmm...). If you need great screen quality, print to a PDF (google PDF995 if you can't afford Acrobat) and then zoom in on that image and do a screen capture.

For recorder and saxophone fingerings, Matthew Hindson has made free fonts.

Actually, if you like this page at all, go to his page. It's great.