The Lassus font is a font modeled on the first music printing with moveable type, circa 1500 by Petrucci. Each character has a length of a five-line musical staff with a particular music symbol placed onto it. The font is not intended for serious musical notation, but is intended for quick-and-dirty, simple musical examples to be placed in a word-processed document so that going back and forth between a word processing program and a drawing or music notation program is unnecessary.  N.B. the notation in the font is modern notation, not sixteenth-century notation.  The details of the font are very fine, and are far too fine to show up completely on a computer monitor, even at sizes as great as 127 points. Typically on screen, not all five staff lines may show up -- in fact, NONE of them may show up.  However, printing to a 300-dpi device will come out just fine, providing the point size you use is about 36 or greater. For general examples (I use this font for handouts for my counterpoint class), I like to use this font at 48 points.  Since the bitmaps provided with the Mac PostScript version of this font are far from clean, it is suggested that you use the font ONLY with Adobe Type Manager, at sizes other than provided in the bitmap files; further, you should only install the 72-point bitmap. HINT: You may want to type your example at the largest point size your software allows, and when it looks fine, reduce it to the correct size for printing. N.B. the PostScript version is a Type 1 font, but is unhinted (Altsys charges extra for a hint editor for Fontographer, and the default hinting does not work for these characters)

Every character in Lassus has a segment of five-line musical staff onto which a musical character has been "engraved." You may not see these lines on screen, but when you print they should be there.  The following list of symbols will help you find these characters.  When Macintosh option-key combinations are required, the requisite ASCII code for the character is included in parentheses so that IBM PC users can find it. Important note: All clefs, notes and rests are the same width, and are the same width as the segment of blank staff found at the 4 character. Dots, accidentals and the bar line characters are 1/4 the width of the notes, and are the same width as the blank segment of staff at the 6 character.

CLEFS AND STAFF LINES

` (tilde) - treble clef
1 - Bass clef
2 - Alto clef
3 - Tenor clef
4 - 1000-em length of blank staff
5 - 500-em length of blank staff
6 - 250-em length of blank staff
shift-option 9 - 125-em length of blank staff (ascii 225)
option-p - two dots (for constructing repeat signs) (ascii 185)

RESTS

7 - eighth rest
8 - quarter rest
9 - half rest
0 - whole rest

MEASURE LINES

dash - thin measure line
= - thick measure line

WHOLE NOTES
N.B. A two and a half octave scale is available for whole, half, quarter and eighth notes. Lowest is two spaces below the staff, highest is two lines above the staff. Pitch names given here are relative to the treble staff.

low G - q
A - w
B - e
(middle) C - r
D - t
E - y
F - u
G - i
A - o
B - p
C - [
D - ]
E - \
F (top line) - a
G - s
A - d
B - f
C - g

HALF NOTES

low G - h
A - j
B - k
(middle) C - l
D - ;
E - '
F - z
G - x
A - c
B - v
C - b
D - n
E - m
F (top line) - ,
G - .
A - /
B - ~ (shift-tilde)
C - 1

QUARTER NOTES
low G - 2
A - 3
B - 4
(middle) C - 5
D - 6
E - 7
F - 8
G - 9
A - 0
B - shift-dash
C - +
D - Q
E - W
(top line) F - E
G - R
A - T
B - Y
C - U

EIGHTH NOTES

low g - I
A - O
B - P
(middle) C - {
D - }
E - |
F - A
G - S
A - D
B - F
C - G
D - H
E - J
(top line) F - K
G - L
A - :
B - "
C - Z

ACCIDENTALS
N.B. Accidentals are designed to go in front of one of the typed notes and are drawn at the correct heights along the scale previously described.

FLATS
low G - X
A - C
B - V
(middle) C - B
D - N
E - M
F - <
G - >
A - ?
B - shift-option tilde (217)
C - shift-option 1 (218)
D - shift-option 2 (219)
E - shift-option 3 (220)
(top line) F - shift-option 4 (221)
G - shift-option 5 (222)
A - shift-option 6 (223)
B - shift-option 7 (224)
C - shift-option 8 (161)

SHARPS
low G - shift-option zero (226)
A - shift-option dash (209)
B - shift-option = (177)
C - shift-option Q (206)
D - shift-option W (227)
E - shift-option E (228)
F - shift-option R (229)
G - shift-option T (230)
A - shift-option Y (231)
B - shift-option U (232)
C - shift-option I (233)
D - shift-option O (175)
E - shift-option P (184)
(top line) F - shift-option [ (211)
G - shift-option ] (213)
A - shift-option \ (200)
B - shift-option A (129)
C - shift-option S (234)

NATURALS
low G - shift-option D (235)
A - shift-option F (236)
B - shift-option G (237)
(middle) C - shift-option H (238)
D - shift-option J (239)
E - shift-option K (240)
F - shift-option L (241)
G - shift-option ; (242)
A - shift-option ' (174)
B - shift-option Z (243)
C - shift-option X (244)
D - shift-option C (130)
E - shift-option V (215)
(top line) F - shift-option B (245)
G - shift-option N (246)
A - shift-option M (247)
B - shift-option , (248)
C - shift-option period (249)

DOTS (these are, of course, designed to follow notes)
low G - option 1 (193)
A - option 2 (170)
B - option 3 (163)
(middle) C - option 4 (162)
D - option 5 (176)
E - option 6 (164)
F - option 7 (166)
G - option 8 (165)
A - option 9 (187)
B - option 0 (188)
C - option dash (208)
D - option = (173)
E - option q (207)
(top line) F - option w (183)
G - option r (168)
A - option t (160)
B - option y (180)
C - option o (191)


FONT AUTHOR INFORMATION

The Lassus font was created by David Rakowski, who claims a copyright on it (All Rights Reserved). It is distributed free of charge, with the following stipulations: you may give copies to your friends without limit, providing all the files from this archive are included; you should not print the TrueType version to a PostScript printer, nor should you attempt to convert from TrueType to PostScript (it just won't work!); any publication which utilizes the font must contain the acknowledgement, "Lassus font for musical example(s) copyright 1991 by David Rakowski, used by permission". User groups and public domain/shareware software outlets may distribute the font with the aforementioned provisos, and in literature which illustrates the font, the example must be printed at 48 points or larger (at 300dpi), and should use the key sequence `8@-l4^-M'4- (that's a lower-case L in the sequence, not a 'one' and the sequence begins with a tilde).

The Lassus font was created at Insect Bytes, a place that smells nice when it rains.

Compuserve: 73240,3060
GEnie: RAKMAN
INTERNET: rak@woof.columbia.edu