Sibelius Blog » Opinion

Headliner.fm: “Nobody does it better than Sibelius”

Daniel Spreadbury — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:25:33 +0000

The fine folks at Headliner.fm have written a blog post running down 10 essential programs for musicians. In with a bullet at number 8 is Sibelius 6, about which Nick from Headliner writes:

When it comes to notation software, nobody does it better than Sibelius. This intelligent and highly capable program allows you to score your music either by on-screen, note-by-note writing or by playing it from your MIDI keyboard, and comes with an instrument library so that you can check on how your composition sounds with ease. Sibelius is perfect for arranging anything and everything from horn sections to choirs to full-fledged orchestras, but you might not get too far without a strong understanding of music theory, harmony, and the dynamics of composition. One of its cooler features allows you to sync Sibelius with your DAW software (i.e. ProTools, Logic) for easy over-dubbing and playback using ReWire. At $499.00 Sibelius isn’t exactly cheap, but luckily they offer Crossgrade and Education versions that support the same essential features at a fraction of the cost.

Pro Tools gets a mention too, of course, at number 3, and Nick calls it “the industry standard in the digital recording world.”

Weekend poll: printer preferences

Daniel Spreadbury — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:24:34 +0000

An ancient dot matrix printer (courtesy PanelSwitchMan on Flickr)

Here’s another little question for you to answer over the weekend: what kind of printer do you use with Sibelius?

Most of the work I do in Sibelius for my own use is adapting and arranging choral music for my choir. As such, I have a large format laser printer with an automatic duplexer at home so that I can print A3 booklets. I use a Windows utility called FinePrint to help make booklet printing as quick and simple as possible.

I’m curious as to what kinds of printers Sibelius users have. Do you have a large format laser or inkjet printer? Are you a heavy user of your printer, or do you print infrequently? Do you have any tips about how to work most effectively with printing from Sibelius? Let me know in the comments below!

How many displays do you have?

Daniel Spreadbury — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:13:35 +0000

Here’s a little question for you for the weekend: what kind of computer do you run Sibelius on, and how many displays do you have attached to that computer?

What’s your ideal configuration for running Sibelius? Do you prefer having, for example, one portrait monitor to show a whole page of music, and a smaller display for the floating tool windows, or do you prefer two landscape monitors with the music stretched right across both in Panorama? Share your stories in the comments, but don’t forget to answer the poll!

A brief history of music printing

Daniel Spreadbury — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:00:53 +0000

Jonathan and Ben Finn, creators of Sibelius

A few years ago, Ben and Jonathan Finn, the original creators of Sibelius, were interviewed for a TV programme here in the UK for The Open University for the TA212 Technology of Music course.

The programme’s synopsis is as follows:

From the middle of the 15th century onwards, the intellectual and cultural life of the West was revolutionised by the development of the printing press. This album explores the technological problems and solutions specific to the printing of music and shows how technology has transformed the way music scores are produced today. The five video tracks examine early music printing processes, 20th century photo lithography and the invention Sibelius, the music programme that changed everything.

You can watch the whole programme here, or download it from iTunes U.

Share and share alike

Daniel Spreadbury — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:40:48 +0000

Courtesy ryancr on Flickr

In the spirit of a “shoot-out”, please allow me a brief rejoinder to Tom Johnson’s most recent post on the Finale blog. He points out that only Finale can export SmartMusic accompaniments (quite right!) but implies also that only Finale can export MIDI files, audio files, MusicXML files, and files that can be opened in other products in the Finale family, while implying that Sibelius can only export Scorch files.

Of course it’s true that Sibelius can export Scorch files, and indeed only Sibelius provides you with not only the ability to embed interactive versions of your scores on your own web site, complete with the ability to play them back, transpose them, and print them out, but also the ability to sell them securely online (and keep 50% of the proceeds).

But lest anybody think that this is the only export option open to Sibelius users, you can also export MIDI files, audio files (in fact, Sibelius was the first notation program to include built-in audio export), MusicXML files (with the purchase of the separate Dolet for Sibelius plug-in), and, of course, Sibelius files can be opened by any of the other products in the Sibelius family, including Scorch, the Sibelius demo, Sibelius First, and Sibelius Student.

And Sibelius has one further trick up its sleeve: you can save files from the current version of Sibelius that can be opened up by any previous version of Sibelius, all the way back to Sibelius 2, which was released nearly a decade ago. Only Sibelius provides you with built-in backwards compatibility in such a way that you can safely upgrade to the latest version even if your friends, colleagues or school is still using an earlier version.

While each year’s update to Finale introduces another new file format that cannot be opened in last year’s version, forcing to use MusicXML to share files with folks using older versions, Sibelius supports “back-saving” natively and with the minimal amount of data loss possible – for example, all of the edits to your dynamic parts are preserved when saving back to Sibelius 4 or Sibelius 5 format. This can save a tremendous amount of time over the inevitably more “lossy” MusicXML format.

Boxing clever: how important is packaging?

Daniel Spreadbury — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:00:51 +0000

Here’s a little question for you, dear reader, to close the week. We’re always evaluating our product packaging, both in terms of its effectiveness in helping prospective customers make a purchasing decision, and also in its impact on the environment.

At the moment, a new copy of Sibelius is packaged in a sturdy cardboard box, glossily printed with a beautiful design on the front, and text outlining the benefits of the product on the back. The box is large enough to contain not only the software disc itself, but also the Sibelius 6 Handbook and Sibelius 6 Reference book (in some versions).

This box looks good on the shelf in a shop, but it comes at a cost. A smaller box would be cheaper to produce and cheaper to ship around the world, and a less glossily printed box could use more recycled materials. With environmental responsibility something that we all value more and more highly, how much emphasis should we be placing on something that is opened once and then discarded? The box is not the product, after all.

So I’m curious about your experience of purchasing Sibelius and the part that the packaging played in your decision to buy. Did you see Sibelius in a shop, pick up the box and look at it, feeling its heft in your hands? If you did see Sibelius in a shop before you purchased the product, did the box play any part in your decision to buy? Can you remember anything that the box said on it? Please answer the question below, and feel free to leave a comment below to share your own experience. Thanks!

You never forget the first time

Daniel Spreadbury — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:17:42 +0000

The first snowdrops of spring (Courtesy paterjt on Flickr)

With spring and a sense of renewal in the air, last week I had the pleasure of seeing Sibelius do something new for the first time. It’s a small pleasure, often repeated throughout the course of each development cycle, but you never forget the first time you see an idea you had brought to life in the software some time later.

Unfortunately I can’t share with you the nature of this most recent advancement in Sibelius, although it is a very small thing. But I thought I would share some of the previous “first times” that I remember over the past several years. More after the jump!

Repulsive

Magnetic Layout is one of the most remarkable bits of programming that has ever gone into Sibelius. It was seven years ago that I first sat down with Jonathan Finn and outlined my idea for a possible approach to automatic collision avoidance, based around two simple principles: firstly, that the closer an object lies naturally to the staff, the higher its precedence should be and therefore the less likely it should be to move; and secondly, that simply avoiding collisions wouldn’t be good enough – Sibelius would have to be able to align some objects as well as preventing them from bumping them into other things.

It took some five years before that germ of an idea was transformed through the skill and dedication of our developers into functioning code, and when finally objects in Sibelius began repelling each other, it was truly a great moment. Admittedly, there were some kinks in the code: at that point, everything was repulsive, so notes and clefs were being repelled away from the staff lines on and between which they were supposed to sit, but it was a start! It didn’t take too long after that for the program to start doing more useful kinds of collision avoidance, and pretty soon we could tell that Magnetic Layout was going to be a truly killer feature.

Parts party

A few years before that, when we were working on dynamic parts for Sibelius 4, two of our developers had sat down and figured out in detail all the parts of Sibelius they were going to have to change in order to accommodate the concept of the same staff, the notes on that staff, and the objects attached to that staff, appearing in more than one view, and with independent spacing, layout, positioning information in each one. This was in itself a Herculean task, Sibelius already being a large and complex application. Away they went, and they beavered away at the innards of Sibelius for what seemed like months, until one day, one of those two developers called me over to his desk.

On his monitor he had two windows arranged side by side: one was the full score, and the other was something that looked like a regular extracted part. He selected the first note in the full score, and dragged it upwards with the mouse: as if by magic, the corresponding note in the part became selected, and moved at the same time.

Undo

Believe it or not, the very first feature that was developed for Sibelius 5 was making ManuScript plug-ins undoable. We had barely finished working on Sibelius 4 when two of our developers (the same two who worked on refactoring Sibelius to accommodate dynamic parts, as it happens) set to work on overcoming the design limitations that had hitherto prevented plug-ins from being undone.

Whenever you would run a plug-in in Sibelius, a scary warning would appear, telling you that the operation you were about to perform wasn’t undoable, and to save your score before proceeding. It was completely out of character with the unlimited levels of undo offered by the rest of the application.

So the developers disappeared for just a couple of weeks, and completely refactored the way ManuScript interacted with the score and the undo system. They invited me to run a plug-in, and then hit Ctrl+Z afterwards. Lo and behold, the note names that had been added above the staff by the plug-in just moments before duly disappeared.

We took out that warning message with great pleasure, knowing that these couple of weeks of work would play an important part in making plug-ins a truly useful part of Sibelius’s toolset. And since the release of Sibelius 5, we have seen literally hundreds of plug-ins developed for the program to do all sorts of things.

Great delight

Seeing Sibelius do something new for the first time is truly one of the great delights of my job. I hope that you, dear Sibelius user, feel something of that delight when you run a new version of Sibelius for the first time, and see all of the new things that we have built for you – but secretly I am glad that the many little joys to be had in watching Sibelius evolve day by day, behind closed doors, are things that only a few of us get to share.

Are there any moments of discovery in your own use of Sibelius that brought a smile to your face? Tell me about them by leaving a comment below.

Strictly Composing winner Julian Pombo is a Sibelius Student

Daniel Spreadbury — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:24:04 +0000

I was delighted to receive a letter here at Sibelius HQ from a young composer called Julian Pombo, who has won the Strictly Composing competition, which was organised as part of the UK government’s Tune In – Year of Music initiative. The Year of Music is designed to get children and young people across the UK more involved in musical activities in the 2009/10 school year. There are all sorts of things going on, including the Sing Up! campaign to get singing into primary schools, school visits by pop musicians including Pixie Lott and the Jonas Brothers, workshops with ensembles like the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, local festivals, and a great deal else besides.

Julian Pombo

The Strictly Composing competition invited students aged 19 or under to compose a tango lasting no longer than five minutes, for any ensemble provided it includes violin and piano. Entries closed at the end of 2009, and the jury was chaired by Antony Hopkins CBE. The winning piece is set to be professionally recorded and performed in London by violinist Sian Phillips later this year.

Julian Pombo’s tango, Amor Joven, was judged to be the winner, and the 15-year-old composer, who has been studying flute at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama for the past three years, used Sibelius Student to write his winning piece. “Sibelius Student has helped me a lot in my composition classes, as well as giving me hours of enjoyment,” he said.

Julian hopes to move up to working in the full Sibelius 6 product soon: “Having won this competition, I would like to enter other competitions that will require writing for orchestra, and for that I’m going to need the full version of Sibelius!”

It’s always great to see our products helping students realise their creativity and playing a role in their development and success. Congratulations, Julian!

Huffington Post says Sibelius is “a technological wonder”

Daniel Spreadbury — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:45:24 +0000

One of the top online destinations for news, The Huffington Post, has started a new column by Ken Gruberman, a Los Angeles-based technology writer and professional arranger and music copyist, who calls himself The Tech Daddy!

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Ken on a couple of occasions, including a very convivial lunch in Anaheim, California a couple of years ago, while Ken was in the middle of working on the music for HBO’s acclaimed miniseries John Adams as copyist and score supervisor. All of the music for that multi-Emmy award-winning production was scored in Sibelius (of course!).

Anyway, Ken’s first column for The Huffington Post details how he got into computer-based copying nearly 25 years ago, when he bought the state-of-the-art (at the time!) Professional Composer notation software for Mac. Of course now, many years later, Ken uses Sibelius, and says:

Still, there are plenty of technological wonders to amaze us all. One of them is Sibelius, the notation software I currently use; I’ve been a fan for several years, and enjoy occasionally demoing the product.

Check out Ken’s column now. It’s worth setting up a bookmark or an entry in your feed reader for Ken’s articles: he’s an engaging writer and will no doubt have some interesting insights into the world of personal technology in the weeks and months to come.

MusicEdMagic.com says Sibelius Student “is an excellent value”

Daniel Spreadbury — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:07:30 +0000

Educator and blogger Chad Criswell, whose site is MusicEdMagic.com, has posted a review of the new version of Sibelius Student, and says:

Sibelius Student has greatly improved its utility as an educational tool for both classroom and home use.

He concludes:

Sibelius Student is an excellent value and provides an excellent set of included features at such a comparatively low price point. While other brands of music notation software offer cheaper alternatives none provide so many of the more advanced features of their professional music notation products the way that Sibelius Student does. Investing in Sibelius Student for a school music lab or for an individual music student to work on at home is an excellent choice and value.

Check out the complete review at Chad’s site.

Sibelius Blog » Opinion

Headliner.fm: “Nobody does it better than Sibelius”

Related posts:

Weekend poll: printer preferences

Related posts:

How many displays do you have?

Related posts:

A brief history of music printing

Related posts:

Share and share alike

Related posts:

Boxing clever: how important is packaging?

Related posts:

You never forget the first time

Repulsive

Parts party

Undo

Great delight

Related posts:

Strictly Composing winner Julian Pombo is a Sibelius Student

Related posts:

Huffington Post says Sibelius is “a technological wonder”

Related posts:

MusicEdMagic.com says Sibelius Student “is an excellent value”

Related posts: