If you work with printing out music at all, you probably know about Finale, which is the premier music publishing software available today. There’s even a free version, called Finale Notepad, which has some of the basic functions of Finale proper, including 8 staves, Setup Wizard, MIDI import/export, the SmartMusic SoundFont (128 sounds), and even Human Playback which plays the music taking into account tempo and dynamic changes (VERY nice!). Here’s a chart that compares the features of the various Finale products.

When working with Finale, they have their own Maestro font that is the default font for the musical notations, including notes, tempo markings, etc. There’s also a Jazz font which is quite cool and allows you to print music that looks like standard jazz sheet music. Sometimes, though, you want to use a different font that might be easier to work with for lining up articulations, etc., and that’s where DVM comes in. They have a free font, called DVMarticulations, which handles articulations more smoothly than most fonts.

If you work with printing music at all, this font is worth checking out and playing with. They also have some free demos of a couple other musical fonts that you might be interested in.