How much work are you willing to do? I have made up a music font from
a relatvely inexpensive CAD system (DESIGNCAD 2D). It takes about
20 minutes to do a simple tune (16 measures with few tied notes
or slurs). Fitting syllables of words under the correct note is
the one of the most time consuming chores, even with a 'move'
feature for a portion of the text or the music, because there are
several operations in setting up the 'block' of text or music to
be moved.

The staff with treble clef sign doesn't have the bottom line much
past the treble cleff. The rest of it is in the mini-drawings
with the notes, spaces, rests, key signature, etc. You just set a
point at the end of the bottom staff line and select from your
memory or a menu what mini-drawing you want to put there. You
aren't limited to the menu items, because you can make up additional
and/or unusual symbols as needed. There are 'universal' notes of
all types with stems up and down, and you can spot these where
you want them and erase any tails you don't need, and add any
dots that you may need.

The font contains, whole, half, quarter, eighth, and 16th notes
covering nearly four octaves (F, to d'). Also there are half size
gracenotes. There are also left, right, and double repeats, and
thin=thin, thin-thick, and thick-thick end lines, staccato signs,
dot for timing, slurs (under and over) for 2 to 5 notes, etc.
Also, all common timing (3/8 to 12/8) and anywhere from 5 flats
to 5 sharps for a key signature. Tiebars (beams) go from 2 to 6
notes with slopes up, down and horizontal.

I have staffs for both landscape and portrait page layout.
Tied dotted eights and sixteenths and other tied doubles have to
be placed where you want them, and you put the dot in later,
otherwise half the time it will be on a staff line. That's easy
with the cursor step spacing set for half-line space vertical.

The separate symbols for sharp, flat, and natural, are in mini-
drawings so you can put them where you want them, or use them to
extend the key signtures curently available.

There are at present 222 mini-files you can place anwhere in
the drawing (plus the vertical and horizontal page layouts).

There are also about 2 dozen different fonts (any size) which you
can use to add text where you want it. You can resize the whole
finished drawing to whatever size you want. I can make JPEGs and
GIFs from drawing files, but these formats do not reproduce crisp
black on white very well. They are not lossless, and edges are fuzzy.

I know old music sometimes presents special situations, e.g.,
beams in the middle of the staff with the connected notes above
and below it. That's relatively easy to handle with a CAD system,
as are multiple notes on a single stem.

A CAD system takes a little time, but you can always make what
you need, if it's not already in a mini-drawing, and size it and
put it where you want it. The drawing file can be printed,
plotted, or downloaded into many common formats, AUTOCAD, GEM,
HPGL, and others.

Bruce Olson

Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below  <A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw"> Click </a>