Apologies for the rant which follows, but...

WHY do publishers of jazz-style music find it necessary to abandon ordinary music engraving styles and instead use some "mock" manuscript style of engraving?

I have a number of books where various styles of this kind are used, and it's frequently almost impossible to read the d*mned stuff. This is especially a problem when playing in an ensemble where you're sharing a music stand and therefore that bit further away from the music. I've found myself having to stop, lift the book up, ascertain which line or space the note is in (or what kind of rest is indicated - there are some styles where the crotchet rest sign is practically horizontal ) before resuming playing.

It doesn't make the music any better, and it's obviously not handwritten in fact (because it's in a published book - duh!), so why do they insist on doing it???

Not cool, and not clever.

[Rant ends. Thanks for listening!]

PS - Does this bug anyone else, or am I just turning into a grumpy old bag?

But dude - it's, like, cool, man! It's jaaaaz!

Can't say I've ever noticed jazz being written in a different style to "normal" music. All the stuff I use regularly is just as readable. I do agree that hand-written styles are difficult, but I tend to experience those most when the music truly is hand written, and then I'm so chuffed to get a piece of music hand-written be e.g. Alan Barnes, or Stan Sulzmann that I'm not going to complain. Although Alan's habit of writing the chord symbols under, rather than over, the stave is bloomin' irritating.

I also hate this! Why must they do it? After two or three years playing trumpet parts (on clarinet) in my jazz band I've practically learnt the tunes by heart, but the other week I was filling in for the pianist and it was impossible to sightread

I agree, it's a difficult font to read, but what annoys me more is when publishers put two or three clarinet parts on one stave, often rendering it unreadable, particularly if the aforementioned font is used...

As a fellow band member, I completely agree with the above rant!

Perhaps this is just some kind of conspiracy to get us all to improvise a bit? I have to add that the jazz books I have at home don't have this kind of layout, though!

This annoys me at jazz band. It's not the notes, but the rests which I can't read. I can't tell the difference between a crotchet and a quaver rest, and I know that whichever one I decide it is, the other tenor player will decide it's the other one, and we both get all our counting wrong and get really out of time!

Having looked through my collection, I think it's maybe a slightly old-fashioned thing? I have a Lennie Niehaus jazz articulations study book (vintage - originally - 1960s, I think, though still in print), and another bop duets book from about the same era, and they are both in the offending font.

On Sibelius (at least on mine, which is 4) the offending font is described as a jazz font. I still ignore it though, and use 'normal' fonts for all music, jazz or otherwise

My Sibelius has a range of offending fonts, not just jazz, but all of them are described as some sort of 'inkpen'.

The only 'inkpen' I use is a real one, with ink in it

I believe it is to emulate the publishing style of Jazz Charts that were handwritten before the publishing software came into play. I think it's quite annoying too!

Personally I love it!

If you have any aspiration of turning professional then get used to it! In the thirty years of my pro career I have seen all sorts, from strange fonts to badly hand written parts that looked like they were written by a 5 year old.

Besides, the font to which you refer is the type of font you will see on most professional jazz gigs. This stems from the time when the arranger would have been in the band - and he would have also have been a highly competant copyist as well.

Shows are notoriously bad for the legibility of music as well.
For one show I did, the parts for the orchestra all had the same Set Number, but we had 3 different styles of binding and 3 different handwriting styles (not to mention a few discrepancies when it came to matching bar numbers between the parts ), all of which were difficult to read. Fortunately, a few Rights-Holders are (slowly) starting to update their libraries with typeset scores, with extracted parts, so no more bar number muckups and impossible to read key signatures!