Notation
Software Review: A Close Look at Sibelius
by James
Frankel
If
you are anything like me, then you probably use the notation software that you
first learned how to use, and are a bit reluctant to try something new. There are a number of high-quality
notation software titles on the market today. For years, the most popular has been Finale. There is no question that it has been the industry standard
for the past decade. The quality
of the output is publishing-house quality, and many are Finale fanatics.
Personally,
I was never a fan of using Finale. I am not a manual
reader, and Finale
is far too complicated to use just flying blind. I used Overture by Opcode (now
Coda). Overture was the first native Power Macintosh
software available, and that is why I started using it. It didnÕt require hours of manual
study, and it produced roughly the
same product. Five
years later I was still using it, until I went to the MENC National Conference
in Washington, D.C. It was there
that I first saw the most incredible notation software I have ever seen. ItÕs name: Sibelius. The following is a review of this music notation
software. While it may appear to
be an advertisement for Sibelius, it is not. It is
the hope of this article to compare the three major notation programs, and
illustrate why it is that Sibelius is quickly becoming the new industry standard, and
revolutionizing the way we will see and hear music in the very near future.
Sibelius claims to be the Òfastest, smartest,
easiest scorewriter in the world.Ó
I decided to start with this claim. What I found to be one of the most amazing features about Sibelius was its dizzying speed. No matter what you ask the program to
do, whether it is to transpose a 32 measure horn part or an 800 measure full
orchestra score, it does it in 1/10th of a second. For all of you who have sat there like I have, watching your
cursor spin around while you wait
for your page to redraw, you will appreciate this feature. You can reformat an entire score in 1/10th
of a second. ItÕs true, itÕs
scary. Perhaps where this
feature is the most useful is when you are extracting parts from a score. It extracts all of the parts in 1/10th
of a second. There is no doubt
about it, Sibelius is
by far the fastest notation program available. The part extraction feature leads me to the next claim,
which is that it is the smartest notation program available. This, I believe, is the most important
aspect of any notation program. I
looked very closely at this aspect, and I liked what I found.
Sibelius claims to be the most ÒintuitiveÓ
scorewriter available. The fact
is, this software contains many features that the others havenÕt even thought
of. Using any other software than Sibelius, part extraction can be a nightmare. HOw many hours have you spent cleaning
up your extracted parts? I know
that even for a simple 64 measure composition written for beginning band, it
can take hours and hours to get every part looking ÒpublishingÓ quality. Things like aligning the dynamic
markings, adjusting multi-measure rests, reformatting the amount of measures
per line so that the part does not have one long measure on the bottom
line. How frustrating is it to
click on each dynamic marking and drag it to itÕs exact location? I have spent hours just doing that,
believe me, itÕs frustrating. What
made me say ÒwowÓ out loud first at the convention was the part
extraction. The presenter pressed
extract, and instantaneously, 32 perfect, ready to print parts were
extracted. The secret behind this
amazing feature is that the dynamic markings are ÒmagneticÓ. By this I mean that when you place any
dynamic marking in a score, it attaches it to the corresponding notes, and
literally sticks with them. While
we are on the subject of dynamics and other marks of edition, the softwareÕs
ÒintuitionÓ shines on playback. We
all know that notation programs are not meant for playback. Sibelius is. The second ÒwowÓ came when the presenter played back an
excerpt, and the program played not only all of the dynamics, but the
crescendos, pizzicatos, tenutos, trills, slurs, accents, marcatos, diminuendos,
etc. The presenter then showed
some of the other playback features.
IÕm warning you now, youÕd better sit down for this. Sibelius has a unique feature called
ÒespressivoÓ. EspressivoÓ makes
your score sound as if it were being played by a human being. You can even adjust how ÒhumanÓ you
want it to be played. Expression,
phrasing and even rubato - they are all slightly different each time you play it.
The
next feature is the ÒSoundStageÓ feature which, get this, actually recreates a
three dimensional recreation of the performance group you have selected. It pans the instruments to where they
would sit in the ensemble, violins sound front left, tubas sound back and to
the right. This feature gives you
quite an impressive playback of the music you create. Other programs simply cannot do this.
If
you have ever used the swing feature in the playback of your jazz works, you
will know that it can be problematic.
Sibelius
actually lets you choose what type of swing you would like your piece played
in, and it is so intuitive, the platback is always perfect, and it really
swings. Add this feature to the
espressivo feature and you can imagine the possiblilities.
One
of the other features is SibeliusÕ intelligent page layout.
How many times have you had to play around with bar lines to fit in 16th
and 32nd notes. Most notation
programs have a set bar configuration, and squeeze the notes into the bar. This often leads to hours of editing,
making sure that all of your notes are legible, and that any accidentals
embedded into a 32nd note run are legible. Both Finale and Overture make you spend hours of time editing problems like these. If you have never had to edit a score
on a notation program, talk to some one who has. Sibelius is truly intuitive.
It takes away all of these annoying tasks and lets you get to the
important things, like writing music.
Sibelius
eliminates all of these editing problems automatically. It knows what you mean, and does it for
you (in 1/10th of a second).
Another amazing part of the intelligent page layout is that the program
allows you set up any template you would like. Just tell Sibelius before you start what instruments you would like to
compose for, and it sets it up for you.
You can then compose the entire score in concert pitch. When it is time to extract the parts, Sibelius automatically transposes the parts
for you. Other notation programs
can do this as well, but you have to read quite a lot of manual to set up these
tasks. Sibelius does it for you.
Sibelius also claims to be the easiest
notation program to use. Quite
simply, it is. I didnÕt read one
page of the manual when I receieved mySibelius software, and I was up and running
like a pro within an hour. I
confess, I did see a demonstration of the software before I began using it, but
that was it. The intuitiveness of
the software makes it so easy. The
tedious tasks are out of mind. The
software fosters your creativity by taking away all of the technical aspects of
using notation software in general.
What makes this product uniquely easy is the way you imput the notation. There are five ways to imput notation
on Sibelius. The first is a feature called
ÒFlexi-timeÓ. For all of you
struggling keyboardists out there trying to input your notes with a MIDI
keyboard, youÕll love this unique feature. While you are playing in your melody along with the
metronome, Sibelius
actually follows you if you slow down or speed up. No other program does that. The second way to imput notes is the old fashioned
Òstep-timeÓ where you click on a note palette and then click on the staff where
you want your note to appear. This
typically is the absolute longest way to input your notes. With Sibelius
it is almost as fast as playing it in. You can play the pitch on a MIDI keyboard with one hand, and
type in the corresponding rhythms using the numeric keypad with the other. It takes a little while to learn how to
use it quickly, but once you do, youÕll be surprised how fast you can enter
notes in to your computer. The
third way is just using the computer keyboard. Want to enter an A, press the letter A. The numeric keypad then acts in tandem
to enter rhythmic values, as well as rests, accidentals, and marks of
edition. The fourth way is to
convert a MIDI file. You can
download a MIDI file from the internet, or even save your work on another
notation program as a MIDI file, and Sibelius will automatically convert the MIDI
file in to a score. The fifth and
final way is to scan sheet music into a Sibelius plug-in program called Photoscore. Sibelius will then convert the scanned image into a
score. ItÕs not 100% perfect yet,
but it is amazing. Imagine
scanning in a duet, transposing it, and printing it out. You can do it with Sibelius.
The
final unique feature of Sibelius that I would like to
highlight is itÕs internet publishing capability. You can save any Sibelius score as an HTML file and publish it
on your own website. What is truly
incredible is a program called Scorch which allows you to then playback the score on your
website as a general MIDI file, with all of the features that I have
listed. In the presentation that I
saw, the clinician then transposed the score on the sight and played in back in
a new key. This is the future of
internet music publishing, and Sibelius is at the front.
No other program is even close to being able to do this. Currently you can download music as
either a PDF file, a General MIDI file or an audio file. Sibelius lets you do it all simultaneously.
In
all my years of technology experience I have never seen anything quite as
revolutionary as Sibelius. I strongly urge you
to try it for youself. Visit
www.sibelius.com and download your free demo today. Let me know what you think of it. IÕm sure that youÕll be just as excited about it as I am.