This blog post is written by Bob Zawalich, composer, guitarist, software designer, and creator of hundreds of useful plug-ins for Sibelius. In this post, Bob summarizes support for harp playback and notation in Sibelius.
One can create harp pedal diagrams in Sibelius character-by-character by creating a Text object, such as Text > Styles > Technique, and using Ctrl+Alt+7/8/9/+ (on keypad) for Windows, or Command-Option-7/8/9/+ (on keypad) for Mac.
The classic shipping pedal harp plug-in for Sibelius is Neil Sands’s Add Harp Pedaling, which by default is found in Home > Plug-ins > Other. It generates harp pedal diagrams from the notes in the selection. There is an updated version of this on the plug-in download page in the Harp category, which can be used for Sibelius 6.1 and 6.2. For Sibelius 7 and later, just use the version of this plug-in that ships with Sibelius.
Neil also wrote Check Harp Pedaling, found in Review > Plug-ins > Proof-reading, which writes warnings in the score if any notes in the selected passage are unplayable on a harp with the pedal configuration specified in the dialog.
Also in the Harp category on the download plug-ins page are several downloadable plug-ins which should be useful to composers and arrangers who work with pedal harp, as well as for harpists. Read on to learn more about those.
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For many readers of this blog, Daniel Spreadbury surely needs no introduction. For the unacquainted, Daniel started working at Sibelius in 1999 and, when he left Avid in 2012, was its senior product manager. During his time there he independently started the very blog you’re reading now, for which he wrote hundreds of posts. So it was a special privilege to invite him to talk about what he’s been doing for the last two-plus years as product marketing manager for Steinberg.
For the better part of two hours we spoke via Skype about a variety of topics related to his current work on a new music notation program. An edited version of his remarks appears below.
Daniel Spreadbury in Steinberg’s London office during our conversation this week
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I know, on the face of it, it doesn’t seem like this has much to do with Sibelius or music notation. But once in a while I come across a neat piece of technology that I like to share. Today it happens to be oTranscribe, a simple, free way to make it easier to transcribe recorded speech.
I’ve done a fair number of interviews on this blog, and transcribing the text of the recorded sessions is a necessary evil. Switching from a media player to a text editor and back again, and rewinding or fast-forwarding takes up too much time. Unfortunately, speech-recognition software has not advanced to the point to make the process entirely mechanical.
To help solve this problem, or at least make the task a little easier, oTranscribe was created by journalist and graphic editor Elliot Bentley. It seamlessly melds the functions of an audio player and text editor into a clean app that runs in any browser that can play back the format of your audio file. The Esc key starts and stops playback. Function keys control rewind and fast-forward, and can also speed up or slow down the audio.
Nothing you write is ever sent to a remote server or stored in the cloud; instead, the transcript is stored in the browser’s local storage, and it is saved every five minutes. When finished, you can then export your work as text or Markdown files.
I could even imagine using this app to create annotations for a piece of music, as a simple shortcut will insert a time-stamp wherever desired.
Oh, and the interview that I’m using oTranscribe for? Well, you’ll have to wait for that to be published on the blog. But here’s a little taste from inside the app:
My friend Steve Reading of Scores Reformed is making the stateside rounds this week, and he dropped by the shop to geek out with me about all things music notation and technology. Among our discussions was finding a way to get certain noteheads to appear slightly smaller or larger in Sibelius.
Finale
This task is quite straightforward in Finale, so I’ll start there. Simply select the passage, and run the Resize Noteheads plug-in, found in Plug-ins > Note, Beam, and Rest Editing.
For example, let’s say I wish to resize the bottom note of a chord to a very specific percentage, say, 59% for whatever reason. I would run the plug-in and enter the following settings in the dialog:
The result would be:
I could have also used the Resize Tool and clicked each individual note, or run Jari Williamsson’s JW Change plug-in to accomplish the same task.
Sibelius
In Sibelius, the out-of-the box options are more limited. There is a small notehead style that you can use, but you can’t easily change its percentage. Still, it’s better than nothing, so let’s explore that first. Read the full article →
