Since version 4.7, beginnings and ends of slurs are produced using
a special font (normalshapemediumseriesslurn16 or normalshapemediumseriesslurn20) rather than using TEX
bracing tokens from normalshapemediumseriescmex10. Thus the bending of slurs is now nicer and,
moreover, several slur sizes are available. For example:
has been coded using normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\Ilegu rather than normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\ilegu (resp. using normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\Ilegl rather than normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\ilegl if a lower slur is wanted), namely:
\NOtes\Ilegu0l\qu g\enotes \NOtes\qu h\enotes \NOtes\ql i\enotes \NOtes\tleg0\ql j\enotes
It should to be noted that, as a standard, ties still use the TEX bracing symbols; this is mainly done to avoid visibility problems with ties occurring in the middle of staffs, i.e. in a situation where tie lines could overlap and be confused with staff lines. But the MusicTEX user can request using special slur fonts by coding normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\Itenu or normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\Itenl instead of normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\itenu or normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\itenl. Even more, big symbol ties are available using normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\ITenu or normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\ITenl.
As a standard, only two slur and tie symbol sizes are referred by
MusicTEX macros, but a quick look into normalshapemediumseriesmusicnft.tex show that these
definitions explicitely refer to a character number of the slur font:
\def\ITenu#1{\selecttenue{#1}\I@tenu{70}}%
\def\Ilegu#1#2{\selecttenue{#1}{\advance\locx@skip by -1.5\qn@width
\I@tenu{70}{#2}}}%
\def\Itenu#1{\selecttenue{#1}\I@tenu{66}}%
\def\ilegu#1#2{\selecttenue{#1}{\advance\locx@skip by -1.5\qn@width
\I@tenu{66}{#2}}}%
Then the MusicTEX user can, for his own special needs, define new macros using other character codes in the range 64–79, knowing that each character of this range is one point longer than the previous one.