I was digging for a font the other day to use with a PowerPoint presentation when I came across a very useful resource for music educators. Chances are that you already know about the Maestro font that Finale and similar music notation products use to display music noteheads on the screen, but did you know that there are many more music themed fonts that you can use for free on posters, handouts, and many more?

To get started go do a search for the term Music over at a site called DaFont. Doing so pulls up a list of about 18 fonts that are in some shape or form related to music. Some are simply text fonts which allow your letters to show up in different shapes and styles. My personal favorites are Distracted Musician and Alpha Music Man.  Distracted Musician blends block letters inside a five line music staff while Alpha Music Man shapes common musical instruments into letters.

There is more here than just text fonts however. There are also wingding style fonts which substitute small pieces of clipart for the letters of the keyboard. For example in WC Musica BTA you get various cleanly done silhouettes of musical instruments like trumpets, horns, harps, and many more.  In Destiny's Music Dings you get much the same thing only with the instruments visible rather than as shadows.  

These kinds of fonts are even more useful than the thematic text fonts in my opinion, allowing me to quickly insert images of instruments and other items directly into my Word document instead of having to go out and find an image that I can use without copyright restrictions.  They also have the added feature of scaling nicely just by changing the font size as needed.

Take a look over at DaFont and see what you can find that you might be able to use in your own classroom. Even if you don't think you need them it is fun just to look at all of the great fonts out there that are available. The creativity of some of the writers is truly amazing.