Professional Work & Industry Licensing

Nor Eddine Bahha is a musician, author and music-font designer whose work spans jazz theory, music notation, engraving and digital typography.

In 2005, he co-authored Jazzology: The Encyclopedia of Jazz Theory for All Musicians with Robert Rawlins, published by Hal Leonard. That same period also marked the beginning of his professional music-font licensing work for notation software.

Jazzology at Hal Leonard · Read the full About me story

NorMusic Fonts v1 and v2 were licensed to GVOX Inc. for the Encore music-notation software. NorMusic v1 was developed for the Encore 4.5.x generation, and an updated NorMusic v2 was created for Encore 5.

Encore 5 included an Encore NorMusic handwritten notation style, giving users an alternative jazz and hand-copied appearance inside the application.

The style remained in later Encore 5 releases, and NorMusic is still credited in Encore 5.0.3 (2012).

EarMaster has used Nor Eddine Bahha’s jazz-oriented font work since the release of EarMaster 6 in 2012. The official EarMaster 6 user guide credits him for the application’s jazz font.

The fonts are based on the BopMusic family, developed for handwritten jazz notation, chord symbols and matching text.

Nor Eddine Bahha developed the RealScore and BigBand chord fonts used in the PG Music ecosystem, in products such as Band-in-a-Box and RealBand.

PG Music documentation continues to credit both fonts to him.

In 2025, Nor Eddine Bahha carried out a major technical revision of the SMuFL-compatible Music Type Foundry (MTF) catalog sold by Notation Central, helping modernize the collection for current notation workflows and software.

Scoring Notes documented the version 3.100 revision on November 10, 2025 and specifically credited him with expanding the glyph set of all of the MTF fonts, in some cases creating several hundred new glyphs in visual harmony with the original designs. Each MTF font now contains at least 1,400 native glyphs.

In 2026, Nor Eddine Bahha collaborated with Notation Central and original designer Luís Salgueiro to revive and expand LS Iris, the distinctive handwritten SMuFL music font originally released in 2021.

He carried out the technical revision and expansion work for the renewed release, helping adapt LS Iris for current SMuFL workflows and modern notation software while preserving the character of Luís Salgueiro’s original design.

The revised release is published and supported by Notation Central. Scoring Notes documented the project in its 2026 announcement.