Pinnacle Systems Sibelius - 2018.11 Reference Guide

Sibelius® Reference Guide

version 2018.11

Legal Notices

For a current and complete list of Avid trademarks visit: www.avid.com/legal/trademarks-and-other-notices Bonjour, the Bonjour logo, and the Bonjour symbol are trademarks of Apple Comput er, Inc. Thunderbolt and the Thunderbolt logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. This product may be protected by one or more U.S. and non-U.S. patents. Details are available at www.avid.com/patents. Product features, specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change without notice.

Guide Part Number 9329-66003-00 REV A 11/18

Contents

Introduction 1

Welcome to Sibelius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Sibelius | First, Sibelius,

and Sibelius |Ultimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Working with the ribbon . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Undo and Redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Connecting external MIDI devices . . . 27

1 File tab 29

1.1 Working with files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1.2 Sharing and emailing files . . . . . . . 35

1.3 Sharing on the web . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

1.4 Starting a new score . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

1.5 Opening files from previous

versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

1.6 Opening MIDI files . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

1.7 Opening MusicXML files . . . . . . . 53

1.8 PhotoScore Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

1.9 AudioScore Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

1.10 Splitting and joining scores

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . . 77

1.11 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

1.12 Exporting audio files . . . . . . . . . . 87

1.13 Exporting video files . . . . . . . . . . 89

1.14 Exporting graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

1.15 Exporting MIDI files . . . . . . . . . . 99

1.16 Exporting MusicXML files . . . . 101

1.17 Exporting to previous versions . 1 03

1.18 Exporting to Avid Scorch . . . . . 107

1.19 Exporting Scorch web pages . . . .113

1.20 Exporting PDF files . . . . . . . . . . .117

1.21 Exporting manuscript paper

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .119

1.22 Classroom Control

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 121

1.23 Worksheet Creator

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 125

1.24 Adding your own worksheets

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 133

1.25 Working with plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 139

1.26 Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

1.27 Display settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

1.28 Keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . 155

2 Home tab 161

2.1 Selections and passages . . . . . . . . 163

2.2 Cues

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 169

2.3 Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

2.4 Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

2.5 Staves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

2.6 Edit Instruments

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 199

2.7 Bars and bar rests . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

2.8 Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

2.9 Filters and Find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

2.10 Hiding objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

2.11 Inspector

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 223

2.12 Sibelius | Cloud Sharing . . . . . . 229

2.13 Plug-ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

2.14 Batch Processing plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 235

3 Note Input tab 237

3.1 Introduction to note input . . . . . . 239

3.2 Keypad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

3.3 Mouse input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

3.4 Alphabetic and step-time input . . 247

3.5 Keyboard window . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

3.6 Guitar tab input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

3.7 Fretboard window . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

3.8 Guitar notation and tab . . . . . . . . 263

3.9 Lute tablature

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 269

3.10 Triplets and other tuplets . . . . . . 271

3.11 Transposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

3.12 Note input options

3.13 Input Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

3.14 Flexi-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

3.15 Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

3.16 Arrange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

3.17 Edit Arrange Styles

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 313

3.18 Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

3.19 Accidentals plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 325

3.20 Composing Tools plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 327

3.21 Notes and Rests plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 333

. . . . . . . . . . . . 279

iii

Contents

3.22 Simplify Notation plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .339

3.23 Tuplets plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .343

3.24 HyperControl™ . . . . . . . . . . . . .345

4 Notations tab 349

4.1 Clefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351

4.2 Key signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .355

4.3 Time signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .359

4.4 Free rhythm

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .363

4.5 Barlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365

4.6 Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371

4.7 Hairpins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .379

4.8 Slurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381

4.9 Edit Lines

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .389

4.10 Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .391

4.11 Edit Symbols

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .397

4.12 Noteheads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401

4.13 Percussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .405

4.14 Edit Noteheads

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . . 411

4.15 Beam groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .413

4.16 Beam positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .419

4.17 Beamed rests and stemlets

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .423

4.18 Importing graphics . . . . . . . . . . .427

4.19 Brackets and braces . . . . . . . . . .431

4.20 Accidentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .433

4.21 Arpeggios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .439

4.22 Articulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .441

4.23 Grace notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447

4.24 Jazz articulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

4.25 Repeat bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .451

4.26 Stems and leger lines . . . . . . . . . 453

4.27 Ties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .455

4.28 Tremolos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .459

5 Text tab 461

5.1 Working with text . . . . . . . . . . . . .463

5.2 Common text styles . . . . . . . . . . .471

5.3 Figured bass and Roman numerals 479

5.4 Instrument names . . . . . . . . . . . . .483

5.5 Typography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .487

5.6 Edit Text Styles

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .493

5.7 Lyrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .501

5.8 Chord symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511

5.9 Edit Chord Symbols . . . . . . . . . . .521

5.10 Chord Symbols plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .529

5.11 Guitar scale diagrams

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .533

5.12 Rehearsal marks . . . . . . . . . . . . .535

5.13 Bar numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .537

5.14 Page numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .543

5.15 Text plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .547

5.16 Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .555

5.17 Font equivalents

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .559

6 Play tab 561

6.1 Working with playback . . . . . . . . .563

6.2 Playback Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . .565

6.3 Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .579

6.4 Live Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .589

6.5 Live Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .597

6.6 Interpretation of your score . . . . . . 603

6.7 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .609

6.8 Playback dictionary

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .615

6.9 Repeats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .627

6.10 Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .633

6.11 Timecode and hit points . . . . . . .637

6.12 Playback plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .641

6.13 Sibelius Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . .645

6.14 MIDI for beginners . . . . . . . . . . .649

6.15 Virtual instruments for beginners 653

6.16 Working with virtual instruments 659

6.17 ReWire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .665

6.18 MIDI messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . .669

6.19 SoundWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .677

7 Layout tab 681

7.1 Document Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . .683

7.2 Title and blank pages . . . . . . . . . .687

7.3 Staff spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .689

7.4 Focus on Staves

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .695

7.5 Magnetic Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . .697

7.6 Auto Breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .703

7.7 Breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .707

7.8 Multirests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .713

7.9 Layout and formatting

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . .717

7.10 Attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .721

Contents

8 Appearance tab 723

8.1 Music engraving . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725

8.2 House Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731

8.3 Note spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735

8.4 Default Positions

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 739

8.5 Order

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 743

8.6 Music fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745

9 Parts tab (Sibelius | Ultimate Only) 749

9.1 Working with parts . . . . . . . . . . . 751

9.2 Editing parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755

9.3 Multiple Part Appearance . . . . . . 759

9.4 Extracting parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763

10 Review tab 767

10.1 Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769

10.2 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771

10.3 Highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773

10.4 Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775

10.5 Analysis plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 783

10.6 Proof-reading plug-ins

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 785

11 View tab 791

11.1 Document view . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793

11.2 Timeline

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only) . . . . . . . . . 797

11.3 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801

11.4 Invisibles etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803

11.5 Panels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805

11.6 Window options . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807

Glossary 809

Keyboard shortcuts 821

Visual index 829

Index 839

Introduction

Welcome to Sibelius

This Reference Guide is a comprehensive guide to all of the features of Sibelius® music notation software by Avid®. The Sibelius software product line consists of three tiers of feature functionality ranging from beginner to professional: Sibelius | First (perfect for beginners), Sibelius (great for students and skilled amateurs), and Sibelius | Ultimate (a must for professionals). Throughout this Reference Guide, “Sibelius” generally refers to all three— Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate—for the sake of readability. Features that are only supported in Sibelius | Ultimate are identified where they are covered in this guide. Features that are limited or are unavailable in Sibelius | First are likewise noted throughout this guide and are also specifically listed in Sibelius | First.

To learn how to use Sibelius quickly, take the necessary time to work through the Sibelius Tutorial.pdf (which is available under File > Help within the program). After just the first few projects in the tutorial and you will be ready to create your own scores in Sibelius with confidence and ease.

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius Ultimate

The Sibelius software product line consists of three tiers of feature functionality ran ging from beginner to professional: Sibelius | First (perfect for beginners), Sibelius (great for students and skilled amateurs), and Sibelius | Ultimate (a must for professionals). Sibelius software is installed using a single installer and runs the same application regardless of which tier is authorized. Your software license determines which tier of Sibelius software functionality is authorized to run on your computer.

 Sibelius | First: Runs when no license for either Sibelius or Sibelius | Ultimate is activated on

your computer.

 Sibelius: Only runs when a Sibelius license is activated on your computer.  Sibelius | Ultimate: Only runs when a Sibelius | Ultimate license is activated on your com-

puter.

On Mac OS X, Sibelius is installed in /Applications/Sibelius.app On Windows, Sibelius is installed in C:\Program Files\Avid\Sibelius\Sibelius.exe

System Requirements and Compatibility Information

A vid can only assure compatibility and provide support for hardware and software it has tested and approved. For complete system requirements and a list of qualified computers, operating systems, hard drives, and third-party devices, visit: www.avid.com/compatibility

Avid Master Account

Your Avid Master Account simplifies access to all of your user accounts and entitlements at my.avid.com. To sign up, go to www.avid.com and click on “Sign In.”

Fill in the required fields located under the “Create Avid Master Account.” The Master Account is divided into sections. Notice t hat the Avid Support Center, Download

Center, and Avid Community need to be linked. Choose “Link this account” if you already have an account or choose “Create Account,” fill in the required fields and click Submit.

Avid Application Manager

Sibelius automatically installs the Avid Application Manager, which can used to activate your software, check for application and plug-in updates (either automatically or manually), and get they latest news from Avid. With Avid Application Manager, you can activate your software either online or offline; however, an Internet connection is required to check for and download updates.

If updates are available for Sibelius or any plug-ins, Application Manager reports what updates (if any) are available and how important the updates are for your system. You can also visit the Avid website to locate, download, and install the appropriate updates for your system.

To manually check for updates, launch Avid Application Manager. If you are not already logged in, click the Account tab and login to your Avid Master Account. Click the Apps tab to review what updates are available and follow the on-screen instructions.For more information about the Avid Application Manager, refer to the Avid Application Manager Guide.

Join the Avid Artist Community

Once you are online and up and running with Sibelius, join the Avid Artist Community. The Avid Artist Community lets you connect with an extensive network of artists, musicians, producers, and media professionals to share your work and your services, find collaborators, and expand your music and audio opportunities. Visit www.avid.com/artistcommunity.

On-screen reference

To start the on-screen Reference Guide, click the button at the right-hand end of the ribbon tab bar, shown on the right, find it within cut

F1 or ?.

Help in the File tab, or type the short-

Whichever application your computer uses to view PDF files will open—on Windows this is normally Adobe Reader, and on Mac it is normally Preview—and the on-screen Reference Guide will appear. To navigate the on-screen Reference Guide, you can use the bookmarks and

Edit  Find features built in to Adobe Reader and Preview.

Bookmarks are like a table of contents that you can have open beside the document you’re reading, allowing you to jump to any chapter, topic, or even sub-heading in the Reference Guide. To show bookmarks:

 In Adobe Reader, choose View  Navigation Panels  Bookmarks; a panel like that shown

below left will appear at the left of your screen.

 In Preview on Mac, choose View  Sidebar  Show Sidebar; a panel like that shown below

right will slide out of the right-hand side of the window.

Welcome to Sibelius

To search within the on-screen Reference Guide, use the

 In Adobe Reader, you can simply type into the Find box on the toolbar shown below left,

Edit  Find feature, or alternatively:

then use the next and previous result buttons to skip forwards and backwards

 In Preview on Mac, you can type into the Search box in the drawer, shown below right, then

click in the list of results to skip forwards and backwards.

Typography and cross-references

Names of computer keys, menus and dialogs are written

like this.

The main way in which you find commands in Sibelius is via the ribbon, a wide band of command buttons that appear at the top of the screen when you click a tab like Each tab describes a related set of commands (

Note Input, Notations, Text, Layout, etc.); when

File or Home.

you click a tab, the ribbon changes to show the buttons that let you use those commands. Each ribbon tab contains a number of groups of related commands.

As a quick way of describing how to access a particular command, this Reference Guide uses the following format: “choose

Home  Instruments  Add or Remove” means “click the Home

tab, look for the Instruments group, and click the Add or Remove button.” The ribbon is explained in greater detail on the following pages, so if this all sounds m ysteri-

ous to you, don’t worry.

 9.1 Working with parts means “see the Working with parts topic at the start of chapter 9 of

the Reference Guide.”

Basic terminology

Most of the computer terminology used in this Reference Guide will be understood b y almost all readers, but has been included in case one or two of the terms are unfamiliar:

 Some keys are labeled differently on different keyboards, particularly on Mac. For the pur-

poses of this Reference Guide, these are the conventions:

Mac symbol Mac name Windows equivalent

 Command Ctrl (“Control”) ^CtrlNone

 Shift Shift  Option Alt  Return Return  Enter Enter (on numeric keypad)

Notice how, somewhat confusingly, the key labeled on the model of your keyboard) on Mac is not the same as the key labeled Mac shortcuts using using the symbol

Ctrl are very rare in Sibelius, but where they appear, they are written

^ (as it appears in menus etc. on Mac) to avoid confusion for Windows

(on main keyboard)

Ctrl (or sometimes Control, depending

Ctrl on Windows.

users.

 Sibelius is almost identical on Windows and Mac, but where there are differences, mainly in

keyboard shortcuts, the Windows convention is listed first. For more information on the differences between Mac and Windows keyboard shortcuts,

 Keyboard shortcuts at the

end of this Reference Guide, which lists all keyboard shortcuts available.

 “Type Ctrl+A or A” means hold down the Ctrl (Windows) or  (Mac) key and type A.

Even though Similarly, for standard shortcuts like you actually type

 Similarly, “Alt+click or -click” means hold down the Alt (Windows) or  (Mac) key and

A is written as a capital letter, don’t type Shift unless explicitly told to do so.

Ctrl+? or ? where both / and ? exist on the same key,

Ctrl+/ or / without using Shift.

click.

 To click something means to move the mouse arrow over it and click the left mouse button.

To right-click something means to point at it with the mouse and click the right mouse button. If you are using a MacBook or other portable Mac, to achieve the equivalent of a rightclick, hold the

 To drag something means to point at it with the mou se, and then click and hold the left

Ctrl key and click the trackpad.

mouse button while moving the mouse. To finish dragging, just let go of the mouse button.

 A dialog is a window with buttons on. Some dialogs are divided into several pages and have

labeled tabs at the top, or a list box at the left-hand side, which you can click to switch between pages of the dialog.

 The numeric keypad is the rectangle of numbers and other characters at the very right-hand

side of your computer keyboard. (Notebook (laptop) computers usually don’t have a separate numeric keypad—

 “Return” is the large key to the right of the letter keys. On some keyboards it is labeled with

“

Enter” or a special arrow symbol, but we always call it Return.

 “Enter” is the large key at the bottom right of the numeric keypad. On some keyboards it is

unlabeled, but it still means

Less well-known terminology is in the

 Keyboard shortcuts for more information.)

Enter.

Glossary at the end of this book.

Welcome to Sibelius

Resources

The Avid website (www.avid.com) is your best online source for information to help you get the most out of Sibelius.

 Account Activation and Product Registration: Activate your product to access downloads

in your Avid account (or quickly create an account if you do not have one). Register your purchase online, download software, updates, documentation, and other resources at www.avid.com/account.

 Support and Downloads: Contact Avid Customer Success (technical support), download

software updates and the latest online manuals, browse the Compatibility documents for system requirements, search the online Knowledge Base or join the worldwide Avid user community on the User Conference at www .avid.com/support.

 Training and Education: Study on your own using courses available online, find out how you

can learn in a classroom setting at an Avid-certified training center, or view video tutorials and webinars www.avid.com/education.

 Products and Developers: Learn about Avid products, download demo software, or learn

about our Development Partners and their plug-ins, applications, and hardware at www.avid.com/products.

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

This topic identifies differences in features and functionality between Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate.

Sibelius | First is a great introduction to working with the Sibelius software line. It supports up to four staves in a score and provides sufficient capabilities for most of your basic music notation needs. If you need more fully featured functionality, you can upgrade to Sibelius or Sibelius | Ultimate anytime through your Avid Master Account.

Sibelius is great for students and skilled amateurs. It supports up to 16 staves and provides all the tools you need to create professional looking scores for music a moderate complexity.

Sibelius | Ultimate is a must for professionals and educators. It lets you create as many staves as the music demands; and it is extensively customizable, so you can make even the most complex music look perfect. There are also easy to use classroom tools for creating, sharing, and reviewing music worksheets and hand-outs.

General

Lets you...

Availability

Number of computers a single copy can be installed on

Software updates and support

AudioScore and PhotoScore

Notation

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Create simple scores with up to 4 staves—can open scores

with more than 4 staves for review, but are be read only

N/A 2, but for use by one person only (so you can run a copy on your

Download the latest update as

it becomes available

Includes Audio Score First

and PhotoScore First

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Create professional-quality

scores and compose simple to

moderate music—up to 16

staves; and can open scores

with more than 16 staves for

review, but they are read only

ally, or purchase and own a

perpetual license

desktop and onther on your laptop or surface.

Access all new releases and Standard support through a

subscription or renewable 1-Year Software Updates + Support

Plan (included with a new perpetual license)

Includes AudioScore Lite and PhotoScore Lite

Compose, arrange, and

publish professional-quality

scores and parts of any size

and complexity with as many

staves as you need; create

notation worksheets and exer-

cises for education; and more

Subscribe monthly or annu-

ally, purchase and own a per-

petual license (educational

discount available), trade-up

from other notation software,

or get network licensing

Accidentals

Metadata

Bar numbers

Normal and double only Normal and double only

bracketed

Common ones only Full set

Limited Full range of formats

Normal, double, quarter-tones,

bracketed

Notation

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Barline types

Bars, irregular

Cross-staff beams (keyboard music)

Beam/rest groupings

Brackets and braces

Change transposition of transposing instruments

Chord symbols appearance and MIDI/text input

Cues

Dotted notes: single, double, triple

Guitar chord diagrams

Guitar scale diagrams

Guitar tab

Instruments

Jazz articulations: falls, scoops, doits, and plops

Single, double, repeat only Single, double, repeat, dotted,

No No, except pick-up bars Yes

No Yes

Fixed Customizable

No Yes

Limited preset options Fully customizable

No Yes

Single dotted Yes

Limited Yes

No Yes

Basic only Full

Common only Common, jazz, and world

No Yes

instruments only, with fixed

number of staves

early music

Full customizable range

Custom lines

Rhythmic note values: 512th note (7 beams) to double breve (4 times duration of whole note)

Custom Noteheads

Ossia staves

Page numbers

Special symbols

Split multirests in parts

Staves

Stemlets (half-stems) and feathered beams

Tuplets

No Yes

32nd note to breve (twice

duration of whole note)

No Yes

Automatic Customizable

No Yes

Up to 4 Up to 16 per system Unlimited

No Yes

Duplets (2:3) to

sextuplets (6:4)

Duplets (2:3) to

nonuplets (9:8)

All

Any (such as 2, 7, 44:31, and

even nested tuplets)

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

Playback

Advanced notation interpretation

Edit MIDI data

Includes Sibelius Sound Libraries

Espressivo 2.0

Live Tempo (tap tempo)

Playback markings on specified repeats

Playback of hairpins

Playback of ritardandi and accelerandi

Playback fermatas

Words that affect playback (such as legato)

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

No Yes

No Sibelius Sounds

No Presets only Customizable rhythmic feel

Limited—playback only Record, edit, clear, and play

(10 GB library) provides

high-quality samples for most

common instruments

No Yes

Fixed Adjustable

Fixed Editable

Sibelius | Ultimate Sounds

(36 GB library) provides a full

range of professional-quality

orchestral, jazz, pop, marching

band, and percussion

back Live Tempo

Notation

Accidentals

Metadata

Bar numbers

Barline types

Bars, irregular

Cross-staff beams (keyboard music)

Beam/rest groupings

Brackets and braces

Change transposition of transposing instruments

Chord symbols appearance and MIDI/text input

Cues

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Normal and double only Normal and double only

Common ones only Full set

Limited Full range of formats

Single, double, repeat only Single, double, repeat, dotted,

No No, except pick-up bars Yes

No Yes

Fixed Customizable

No Yes

Limited preset options Fully customizable

No Yes

bracketed

Normal, double, quarter-tones,

bracketed

early music

Notation

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Dotted notes: single, double, triple

Guitar chord diagrams

Guitar scale diagrams

Guitar tab

Instruments

Jazz articulations: falls, scoops, doits, and plops

Custom lines

Rhythmic note values: 512th note (7 beams) to double breve (4 times duration of whole note)

Custom Noteheads

Ossia staves

Page numbers

Special symbols

Split multirests in parts

Single dotted Yes

Limited Yes

No Yes

Basic only Full

Common only Common, jazz, and world

No Yes

32nd note to breve (twice

duration of whole note)

instruments only, with fixed

number of staves

No Yes

Automatic Customizable

No Yes

Full customizable range

All

Staves

Stemlets (half-stems) and feathered beams

Tuplets

Utilities

Annotate

Arrange: automatic arranging and orchestration

Comments (sticky notes)

Compare different scores or versions

Copy and paste to Word and other programs

Display timecode

Edit Dynamic Parts

Up to 4 Up to 16 per system Unlimited

No Yes

Duplets (2:3) to

sextuplets (6:4)

Duplets (2:3) to

nonuplets (9:8)

Any (such as 2, 7, 44:31, and

even nested tuplets)

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Yes

No Yes

Yes

No Yes

No Low resolution (96 dpi) only Yes

No Single format Customizable format

No Limited Full

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

Utilities

Edit word menus

Export a log of changes to a score

Export lyrics as text file

Filters for editing similar objects

Find

Focus on staves

Graphics export (for creating worksheets and other content)

Highlight music

Ideas Hub

Import MusicXML files

Instrument changes

Join scores together

Keyboard shortcuts

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

No Yes

No Quick filters only Yes

No Yes

Yes

No 300 library ideas included

and lets you capture your own

ideas (editing not supported)

Yes

No Yes

Fixed Customizable

2,000+ library ideas included,

and lets you capture and edit

your own ideas and add to a

score and/or the library

Lyric verses allowed

Lyrics from text file

Note input options

Panorama scroll view

Paper and desk textures

Part extraction

Paste as Cue No Yes

Plug-ins

Inspector window to edit individual objects

Rehearsal marks

Repeat structures

Rulers

Score Starter: (40 genre-specific templates)

Slide notes and rests

Special page breaks

2 5 Unlimited

No Yes

Fixed Limited Full

Yes

40 Over 60

No Yes

None 38 included Over 140 included

No Full

No Default only Fully customizable

Fixed Customizable Fully customizable

No Yes

Utilities

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

Timeline window

Swap voices

Versions

Video, including timecode and hit points

Viewing options for Magnetic Layout, page margins, note colors, full screen, and more

Worksheet Creator

Publishing

Advanced layout features

Auto Layout options

Edit fonts

Edit staff types

Edit text styles

Engraving rules (hundreds to edit)

No Yes

Latest (head) version only Save, view, and print only Yes

No Add video, add/edit hit points Yes

No Yes

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

No Yes

No Limited Full

No Yes

Headers/footers

House Style import/export

Intelligent Rests

Magnetic Layout

Manage Dynamic Parts

Manuscript papers (preset score layouts)

Multiple staff size

Note spacing rules

Reset position/design of objects

Set default object positions

Staff spacing

No Yes

No Import only Yes

No Yes

No Fixed Fully customizable

No Yes

Includes a few, but you cannot create your own Includes many, and you can

create your own

Fixed Fully customizable

Limited Yes

No Yes

Fixed Manual adjustment only Yes

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

Export and Share

Audio recording export

Avid Scorch optimized export (app available on the iTunes App Store)

Email score as .sib or .pdf

Graphics file export

MIDI file export—Type 0 and Type 1 any device

MusicXML file export (compressed or uncompressed)

Previous version export

Publish directly to ScoreExchange.com

Scorch (browser plugin) web page export

Share to YouTube, Facebook, SoundCloud

Sibelius | First Sibelius Sibelius | Ultimate

N/A WAV, AIFF, and MP3

No Yes

No PDF export only Standard bitmap and vector

No Yes

formats (SVG, EPS, PNG,

JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, and

PDF)

Sibelius | Cloud Sharing

Video file (Export score as)

10 scores 20 scores Unlimited (up to 1 GB stor-

No Yes

age)

Keypad in Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate each provide six Keypad layouts: Common notes (F7), More notes (F8), Beams/Tremolos (F9), Articulation (F10), Jazz articulations (F11), and Accidentals (F12). However, not all options available with Sibelius | Ultimate are available Sibelius and Sibelius | First (see

 Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate).

The Keypad also lets you select which voice in a staff you want to add or edit notes. While Sibelius and Sibelius | Ultimate let you work with up to four voices on a staff, you are limited to two voices with Sibelius | First. For more information about the Keypad, see

 3.2 Keypad.

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate and the Ribbon

The contents of the Ribbon differ between Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultim ate. For instance, the Parts tab is only available in Sibelius | Ultimate. Similarly, Sibelius | First and Sibelius provide fewer options in each tab than Sibelius | Ultimate. For more information about the Ribbon, see

 W orking with the ribbon.

Working with the ribbon

The ribbon

Ribbon tabs

Help button

Open new tab

Switch tab

Status bar Zoom controlsDocument view

buttons

Information

read-outs

Title bar

Minimize ribbon

Window buttons

(at top left on Mac)

Document tabs

Quick Access Toolbar

(Windows only)

Find box

Working with the ribbon

The ribbon is the w ide band of command buttons that appears at the top of the Sibel ius window, housing all of the features of the program, organized according to task. In addition to the ribbon, every Sibelius document window also contains other useful controls. Si belius | First and Sibelius provide 10 tabs in the ribbon: File, Home, Note Input, Notations, Text, Play, Layout, Appearance, Review, and View. Sibelius | Ultimate has these and also includes the Parts tab. Most images of the ribbon in this guide show Sibelius | Ultimate. However, not all of the options included Sibelius | Ultimate are available with Sibelius and Sibelius | First, so depending on which of these you are running, you may not see all of the options in your software that you see in this guide. For example, the Home tab in Sibelius | Ultimate provides access to the Inspector and Plug-ins, while in Sibelius, only Plug-ins are available and in Sibelius | First neither of these options are available. For more information about what is or is not supported with Sibelius or Sibelius | First, see

The Sibelius window

The picture below shows a typical Sibelius window, so you can see where the ribbon is, and several other useful controls at the top and bottom of the window:

 Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

Here’s a quick guided tour to the Sibelius window, startin g at the top and working our way down:

 Quick Access Toolbar (Windows only): this has three important buttons: Save, Undo and

 Title bar: this shows the filename of the document, and the name of the current dynamic part

Redo. The Undo and Redo buttons also have menus attached to them, allowing you to

quickly undo or redo to any point since you opened the score. (On Mac, these options are found in the

or version being viewed (if applicable). On Windows, you will see an asterisk (

File and Edit menus respectively.)

*) after the

filename if the score has unsaved changes. (On Mac, you will instead see a black dot inside the red close button at the top left-hand corner of the window.)

 Window buttons: the title bar contains a set of buttons for working with the current window.

On Windows, these buttons appear at the top right-hand corner, while on Mac, they appear at the top left-hand corner.

 Minimize is the first of the three buttons on Windows, and the middle of the three on Mac.

Click this to make your score window disappear from the screen without closing the file.

 Restore down/Maximize (called Zoom on Mac) is the second of the three buttons on

Windows, and is the third of the three buttons on Mac. This button resizes the document window. Clicking this button toggles your window between maximum size or its previous size.

 Close is the third of the three buttons on Windows, and the first on the Mac. As the name

suggests, clicking this button closes the current window.

 Find box: type one or more keywords into this box to see a list of suggested controls on any

of the ribbon tabs; very useful for finding something if you can’t remember exactly where it is. As you type, Sibelius shows a list of matching controls: use need, then hit

Return to be taken there. Sibelius helpfully highlights the control for you.

/ to choose the one you

Sibelius also provides a customizable keyboard shortcut to search for any command in the Ribbon and then press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to execute the command immediately. This lets you quickly execute common commands while the Ribbon is hidden. Press “,” (Comma) to enter the Find in Ribbon Search field (you can define your ow n keyboard shortcuts for entering the Find in Ribbon Search field in File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts > Other > Activate Find in Ribbon).

 Minimize Ribbon: the ribbon (described below) takes up a reasonable amount of vertical

space. If you want to see more of your score as you work on it, click the Minimize Ribbon button. When you do, the ribbon disappears, leaving only the ribbon tabs across the top of the screen. To make the ribbon reappear, click the button again to make the ribbon reapp ear permanently, or simply click whichever tab you want to use to make the ribbon reappear until you have finished making a choice from it, at which point it disappears again.

 Help: click the ? button to open this Reference Guide in its on-screen form. You can find

further help in the

 The ribbon: discussed in more detail below.  Document tabs: you can open multiple different views of the same document—e.g. a full score

File tab of the ribbon.

and individual instruments’ parts—inside a single window, and switch between them using these tabs. When you start a new score, only one tab will be shown, labeled open new tabs using the options that switch the view (e.g. hitting

+ button at the right-hand side of the document tab bar , or through other

W switches between the full score and the dynamic part

Full Score. You can

corresponding to the current selection). You can re-order tabs simply by dragging them, and you can “tear off” a tab to open the score or part currently being viewed in that tab in a new window of its own: click and hold a tab, and drag it up or down; a Sibelius score icon appears under the mouse pointer. Release the mouse button, and the a new window is created where you dropped the Sibelius score icon.

 Open new tab: this + button shows a menu that allows you to open a new tab containing a differ -

ent view from the current score, including dynamic parts and saved versions. You can also choose

New Window, which opens the current tab in a new window. You don’t have to click the

button itself to open the menu: simply right-click anywhere along the document tab bar to do the same thing.

Working with the ribbon

 Switch tabs: if you have many tabs open at once, you may not be able to see all of the names

of the tabs clearly across the width of the tab bar. Click this button to show a menu listing all of the open tabs in the current window, allowing you to quickly switch to any of them.

 Status bar: the status bar runs along the bottom of the window, which gives you information

about the current document and has some useful buttons for quick access.

 Information read-outs: at the left-hand of the status bar is a series of useful read-outs. From

left to right: the current page and the total number of pages; the total number of bars; th e instrument on which the current selection resides, if there is one; the range of the current selection, if there is one; the timecode of the current selection; the pitches of the selected notes (or the first note or chord of a passage if you have a range of music selected); the harmony of the chord made up by all of the selected notes at the start of the selection, displayed as a chord symbol; a description of the current operation (e.g.

Edit Passage or Edit Text);

whether or not the current view is currently displayed at concert (sounding) pitch or transposing (written) pitch; whether

Layout  Hiding Staves  Focus on Staves is switched on;

whether or not Magnetic Layout is enabled or disabled for the selected objects; and/or the font and point size of the selected text object.

 Zoom controls: at the right-hand end of the status bar is a slider with—and + buttons at either

end that allow you to change the zoom level of the current view quickly and easily. To the left of the slider is a read-out of the current zoom level, expressed as a percentage.

 Document view buttons: to the left of the zoom controls is a set of buttons that allow you to

switch between different types of view quickly, for example between showing the pages of your score laid out horizontally and Panorama view. These buttons are also found on the

View tab of the ribbon.

The ribbon tabs

The ribbon itself is split into 11 tabs with Sibelius | Ultimate (the Parts tab is not available in Sibelius or Sibelius | First). The first tab,

File, is unlike the other tabs: clicking it hides the

score altogether and instead shows you a special view called Backstage, which contains everything you might want to do with a file (as opposed to what you might do to a file, which is what the other 10 tabs are for). From the

File tab you can create, open, save and close files,

import and export them in different formats, print music out, access special learning and teaching features, get detailed help, and more. (The first chapter of this book is devoted to the operations you can perform from the

File tab.)

The other 10 tabs are ordered roughly according to the order in which you typically perform tasks while working on a score, so as you make your way from the start of a project towards its end, you will typically work your way through most of the tabs of the ribbon from left to right. (This book is likewise ordered according to the order of the tabs.)

These 10 tabs contain the following kinds of commands:

 Home: basic score setup, like adding or removing instruments and b ars, plus key editing

operations, including clipboard operations and Sibelius’s powerful filters.

 Note Input: commands relating to alphabetic, step-time and Flexi-time input, plus not e edit-

ing operations, compositional tools such as explode/reduce, and transformations such as retrograde, inversion, and so on.

 Notations: all of the basic markings other than notes, rests and t ext, including cl efs, key and

time signatures, special barlines, lines, symbols, notehead types, etc.

 Text: font style and size controls, choice of text styles, plus lyrics, chord symbols, rehearsal

marks, and bar and page numbering options.

 Play: choice of playback configuration, mixer, transport (playback) controls, Live Tempo,

Live Playback, options for how Sibelius should interpret your score duri ng playback, and features for writing music to video.

 Layout: document setup options such as page and staff size, staff spacing, hiding staves,

Magnetic Layout options, plus formatting controls.

 Appearance: options that affect the visual appearance of your score, including choice of

house style, note spacing and instrument name format, plus commands to reset or change the design or position of the objects in your score.

 Parts (Sibelius | Ultimate Only): options relating to instrumental parts.  Review: add annotations, add and review sticky note comments, create and manage multiple

versions of the same score, compare revisions, and access various proof-reading plug-ins.

 View: change the layout and size of the music on the screen, show or hide various “invisi-

bles” and other helpful markings that provide useful information about your score, h ide or show extra panels for advanced operation, and arrange or switch between the open document windows.

Groups and controls

Each ribbon tab contains a number of groups, which organize related commands together. The name of each group is shown below the names of the individual commands in gray text, and groups are separated from each other by a vertical line:

The picture above shows the

Common, Lines and Symbols groups from the Notations tab.

Each group contains one or more controls of various types, including buttons, buttons that open menus, split buttons (where half the button is a regular button and the other half opens a menu), checkboxes, combo boxes and galleries, which are menus with special features. Galleries come in two flavors:

 Drop-down galleries: these may look a lot like normal menus, displaying their contents as

text, or they may display their contents graphically. Unlike regular menus, galleries typically list options organized by category, which can then be filtered (see below). An example of a textual gallery is

Home  Select  Filters. All of the but tons in the Notations  Common group

shown in the picture above use drop-down graphical galleri es.

 In-ribbon galleries: these galleries are embedded directly in the ribbon, allowing you to see

the first few items in the gallery without opening it. In-ribbon galleries allow you to scroll up and down the list using the scroll arrow buttons at the right-hand end, or to open the gallery, making it appear like a drop-down gallery.

Notations  Lines and Notations  Symbols both

contain in-ribbon galleries, shown in the picture above.

Many galleries in Sibelius contain category filters, which allow you to show only one kin d of thing at a time in a gallery. Category filters are found at the very top of an open gallery; by default, there is no filter (so the filter reads

All), but you can click the filter name to show a

menu in which all the categories are listed. Choose one category and all of the other categories are filtered out.

Depending on the width of the window, the ribbon will do its best to display as many as possible of the controls in all of the groups on the current tab. Some controls may be stacked vertically to save space, or perhaps even hide their textual description. If space gets very tight,

Working with the ribbon

some groups may end up collapsed, which means that instead of showing each of its controls directly on the ribbon, all of the controls are collapsed behind a single button, which shows the whole contents of the group below the ribbon when clicked, like this:

In the picture above, several of the groups on the

ing

group has been opened by clicking the button that represents the collapsed group.

Layout tab are collapsed, and the Staff Spac-

Sibelius has so many commands that in order to ensure every group on every tab is not sh own collapsed, your screen display has to be at least 1920 pixels wide!

Keyboard access

The ribbon includes a number of time-saving features to help you to learn and get around the program quickly, chief among them the ability to access every command via the keyboard using key tips. Key tips are special shortcuts that take you straight to a command, whichever ribbon tab it is on.

To show key tips, simply hit

Alt (Windows) or Ctrl (Mac): you don’t need to hold the key

down. A small overlay appears below each tab’s name:

T o access a tab, simply type the key tip shown for that tab. For example, type

Layout tab:

L to switch to the

Now type the key tip shown (usually two letters) for the command you want to use. Once you have set the focus into the ribbon by hitting

also navigate around the tabs and the controls in each tab using the arrow keys or

Shift-Tab, then use either Space, Return or Enter to activate the button or other co ntrol that is

Alt (Windows) or Ctrl (Mac), you can

Tab and

currently in focus.

Screen tips

Closes the window

Closes the tab

Every command in the ribbon also has an extended text description, which appears if you hover your mouse over it for a moment. These descriptions are called screen tips, and they provide useful additional context on each command.

On the right, you can see the screen tip for

Clipboard 

Select G raphic. Notice how a keyboard short-

Home 

cut is shown in parentheses after the name of the command. Unlike key tips, which can only be used in sequence after hitting

Alt (Windows) or Ctrl (Mac), this

kind of keyboard shortcut can be used from anywhere, and furthermore you can customize them if you want to.

Launching related dialogs

Some groups in the ribbon have a small extra button in the bottom right-hand corner called a dialog launcher button, which when clicked, you will be surprised to learn, l aunches a dialog containing further options relating to the co mmands in that group.

In the picture above, the mouse pointer is over the dialog launcher button in

Setup

, which launches the Document Setup dialog, in which you can change the page size,

Layout  Document

orientation and margins with additional options over and above those on the ribbon.

Single document interface

Sibelius uses a single document interface, which means that each score opens in its own window, complete with its own ribbon and all of the tools you need to work with that score. As you open new parts or versions, they open by defaul t in new tabs within the same window (which you can re-order by dragging, or tear off to open the view in a new window).

To close a score, close the whole window by clicking the close icon at the top right-hand corner (Windows) or top left-hand corner (Mac). By default, when you close the last document window, the Quick Start window opens again, to allow you to open a recent score or create a new one. This also prevents Sibelius from quitting on Windows, because once there are no windows open, the application will quit.

If you don’t want to show the Quick Start again after closing the last score, you can close the last score by clicking the close icon on the last document tab instead, which will clo se the score but leave the window open.

Once you close the last tab in the last window, all of the controls on the ribbon are disabled, but you can now click the

File tab, which now opens by de fault at the Recent page so that you can

Working with the ribbon

open a recent score, or you can click

Open to open another existing score, or New to start a new

one. If you work in this way, you can switch off the option

score

(either on the Quick Start window itself, or on the Other page of File  Preferences),

Show Quick Start again after closing last

though beware that once you close the empty document window that is left behind after closing the last tab on the last score, Sibelius will still quit on Windows.

On Mac, applications can still run when they have no win dows, so Sibelius remains running until you explicitly quit. If you click the Sibelius icon on the Dock when Sibeli us is running but with no windows open, the Quick Start window opens automatically to help you get started again.

Saving your working environment

Sibelius automatically keeps track of the arrangement of windows and tabs while you are working on your score, so that it can restore them the next time you open it. When you re-open a score you have worked on before, Sibelius will:

 Open the document window to the same size and position you had used when you last closed

 Open all the tabs that were open when you last closed it, and bring the last-used tab into

focus

 Set the zoom level and type of view to the same as those used when you last closed it  Restore the settings on the View tab of the ribbon for whi ch “invisibles” (useful things that

display on the screen but are not normally printed out) should be shown

 Open the panels (such as the Mixer, Ideas panel, etc.) that were open when you last closed it.

You can, of course, tell Sibelius which of the above things you want it to do for you, via the

Display and Files pages of File  Preferences— 1.27 Display settings.

Notes for upgraders

If you have upgraded from Sibelius 6 or earlier, you may be a little disorientated when you first run your new version of Sibelius and see that the old menus and toolbar have been replaced by the ribbon. But don’t worry: you’ll soon get used to it, and before long you’ll find it much clearer than before. The

Find in ribbon box at the top right-hand corner of the ribbon is

an invaluable tool in searching for features that you have temporarily mislaid. Here, broadly speaking, is how to find things in the ribbon according to the menus used in ear-

lier versions of Sibelius:

 File menu items are now found in the File tab  Edit menu items are split between the Quick Access Toolbar (for undo and redo), Home tab

(for selecting, filtering, coloring and navigating) and the out and Order settings). You can still access a cut-down version of the

Appearance tab (for Magnetic Lay-

Edit menu by right-

clicking on a selection in your score, just as in previous versions of Sibelius.

 View menu items are found in the View tab  Notes menu items are split between the Appearance tab (for resetting beam groups and

positions, stems and tab fingering) and the

 Create menu items are split between the Notations and Text tabs. You can still access the

Create menu by right-clicking on the score window with nothing selected, just as in previous

Note Input tab (for everything else).

versions of Sibelius.

 Play menu items are found in the Play tab  Layout menu items are found in the Layout tab, except for Reset Desi gn and Reset Position,

which are on the

Appearance tab

 House Style menu items appear in many tabs: the various Edit... d ialogs are now found by

clicking the dialog launcher arrow in the appropriate ribbon group (e.g. opened by clicking the dialog launcher arrow in the features (including

Engraving Rules and house style import/export) are on the Appearance

Notations  Noteheads group); the other

Edit Noteheads is

tab.

 Plug-ins: the most useful ones appear individually on the ribbon next to related features of

the program. Several tabs also have dedicated

Plug-ins galleries, e.g. the Text tab has a gal-

lery of all plug-ins to do with text and chord symbols. Also, any custom folders of plug-ins you have added will appear in the

 Window menu items are found on the View tab  Help menu items are found in the File tab, in the Help pane.

Home  Plug-ins gallery.

As far as possible, keyboard shortcuts are the same as in previous versions of Sibelius, so power users who have memorized a lot of shortcuts should feel right at home.

Undo and Redo

Two of the most important features in Sibelius are undo and redo, which allow you to move backwards and forwards through the edits you have made since you opened the score you’re working on. How you access undo and redo is, unusually, different in the Windows and Mac versions of Sibelius.

Windows users

On Windows, undo and redo are found on the Quick Access Toolbar, which appears in the top left-hand corner of each Sibelius document window, as shown on the right.

T o undo the last thing you did, click the left-pointing arrow, or type the shortcut show the undo history menu: click on any item in the menu to undo directly to that point.

T o redo an operation you didn’t mean to undo, click the right-pointing arrow, or type the shortcut the menu part of the button to show the redo history button. The most recent operation you undid is at the top of the list, so click the top item to redo one step, the second item to redo two steps and the bottom item to redo everything you undid and get back to where you were. (If you see what I mean.)

Ctrl+Z. You can click the menu part of the button to

Ctrl+Y. As with undo, you can click

Mac users

On Mac, undo and redo are found in the

Z to undo the last thing you did. The Edit menu tells you what the last thing you did was, in

case you have a very short memory. (Well, it tells you the last thing you did in Sibe lius—it won’t say

Edit  Undo History (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Z or Z) lists all the recent operations you’ve done,

and lets you hop back to a particular earlier point in time. The most recent operation is at the top of the list, so click the top item to undo one step, the second item to undo two steps and the bottom item to undo as far back as you can go.

To redo an operation you didn’t mean to undo, choose Again, the

Edit  Redo History (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Y or Y) is like Undo History, but lists all the things

you can redo after you’ve done a load of undoing.

Undo level

To set how far back you can undo, choose the slider. You can undo up to 20,000 operations, so if you set the undo level large enough you can undo right back to when you started writing the current score.

If you set it larger still, you can even undo back to before you bought Sibelius.

Undo Sneeze, entertaining though that might be.)

Edit menu tells you what it was you just redid.

Edit menu. Choose Edit  Undo, or type the shortcut

Edit  Redo, or type the shortcut Y.

Other page of File  Preferences and drag the

Connecting external MIDI devices

There are three steps to setting up your external MIDI devices: connecting the hardware, installing the necessary software (if any), and then setting up MIDI in Sibelius. This topic takes you through the first two steps, and the last step is described in page 283.

Connecting MIDI devices to your computer

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a standard, not a thing—the universal standard for connecting electronic musical instrument s together. MIDI keyboards, synthesizers, sound modules, samplers and other electronic music gadgets can all be plugged into one another with MIDI cables, and can also be plugged into your computer. Virtual instruments and software synthesizers are also MIDI compatible, and as they’re already in your computer you don’t need to attach cables at all in order to play music back.

All modern MIDI devices, such as controller keyboards, have USB connections, enabling you to connect your MIDI keyboard directly to your computer using only one USB cable.

For older MIDI devices without direct USB connections, you can connect a separate MIDI interface to a USB port on the back of your computer, and plug your MIDI device into the MIDI interface using MIDI cables.

Connecting MIDI devices directly via USB

All new MIDI keyboards and other devices can connect directly to your computer’s USB sockets without the need for a separate MIDI interface. To install one of these devices, simply connect a USB cable (which may be provided with your device) t o y our compu ter, and follow the on-screen instructions to install the necessary driver software, if any.

Once any required drivers are correctly installed, you can set up input and playback in Sibelius—

 3.13 Input Devices.

You should switch on the p ower on your USB-connected MIDI devices before running Si belius. Failure to do so may result in Sibelius not correctly detecting your MIDI device when it loads. Be aware that some bus-powered devices, meaning devices that have no separate power supply unit and draw power directly through the USB cable, will only work reliably if connected to a USB socket on your computer, not on an external device such as a USB hub or, say, your Mac’s keyboard.

 3.13 Input Devices on

Connecting MIDI devices via a MIDI interface

A MIDI interface is a small box that sits between your computer and your external MIDI devices, sending MIDI data back and forth. MIDI interfaces usually connect to a USB port on your computer. You would only need a MIDI interface if your external MIDI device doesn’t have its own direct USB connection.

MIDI interfaces often require additional driver software, which will be supplied by your device’s manufacturer.

We’ll assume your MIDI interface connects via USB, and show you a common MIDI setup. Connections between MIDI devices all use standard MIDI cables, pictured on the right.

To plug in just a MIDI keyboard, connect its “Out” socket to the MIDI interface’s “In” socket. This means that music played on the keyboard will go out of the keyboard, along the cable and in to the computer.

To make the computer play back music into the keyboard (e.g. if the keyboard has sounds built into it), also connect the MIDI interface’s “Out” to the keyboard’s “In.”

If your keyboard has two “In” or “Out” sockets, it usually doesn’t matter which you use— they’re just convenient duplicates of each other.

So connecting up such a keyboard looks like this:

If you want to connect just, say, a sound module, rather than a keyboard, simply connect the MIDI interface’s “Out” to the sound module’s “In.”

Once you’ve connected your MIDI devices to your computer, you can set up input in Sibelius—

 3.13 Input Devices on page 283.

File tab in Sibelius | Ultimate

File tab

1.1 Working with files

This topic explains saving scores in Sibelius format, and (for more advanced users) how to access files containing custom Sibelius settings (e.g. house styles). The other topics in this chapter will tell you how to share files with other people, whether or not they have Sibelius, and how to import and export files in various formats.

Creating a score

There are several ways to start a new score in Sibelius—

File size

Sibelius files typically occupy around 20K plus 1K per page (excluding any import ed graphics), even for band or orchestral music. This means you can fi t literally millions of pages on your hard disk, and even huge scores can easily be sent by email. So even if your name is J.S. Bach, disk space is unlikely ever to present a problem when using Sibelius.

Saving

Saving works just like in any other program, using

S) and File  Save (shortcut Ctrl+S or S). In addition to being able to save Sibelius scores,

you can also export other formats, such as MusicXML, MIDI, audio, and graphics; for more details, see the relevant topics in this Reference Guide. To save lyrics, see page 551.

A convenient place to save is the Windows, the your user

You can change which folder is the default for sav ing scores on the of

File  Preferences.

When you next open the score after saving, it will open at the point at which you were working on it when you saved, with the window in the same position, the same panels and windows visible, and even at the same zoom factor.

You have complete control over to what extent Sibelius restores yo ur previous working environment when reopening a score you have previously saved—

Scores folder is created inside your My Documents folder; on Mac, it is inside

Documents folder.

Scores folder that Sibelius has helpfully created for you. On

 1.4 Starting a new score.

File  Save As (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+S or

Export Lyrics on

Saving and Exporting page

 1.27 Display settings.

Auto-save

Sibelius can automatically save your score at timed intervals so that, should your computer crash, the most work you can lose is a few minutes’ worth. Rather than saving your actual file, Sibelius makes a copy of your score and saves it into a special hidden folder.

If Sibelius doesn’t shut down correctly (for example, if your computer crashes or there is an interruption in power), the next time you start the program, it checks the special folder, and if it finds any scores in that folder, you will be asked if you want to restore them.

When you close Sibelius normally, it deletes all the files in the special folder—so it’s essential that you don’t save any files in there yourself!

Auto-save is switched on by default, but if for some reason you want to switch it off, do so from the how often Sibelius automatically saves your score; the default is 10 minutes.

Saving and Exporting page of File  Preferences. You can also specify in this dialog

Backups

Each time you save, the score (with a version number added to the nam e) is also saved, by default, in

Backup Scores in your Scores folder. If you ever accidentally delete or mess up a

score, look in this backup folder to get the latest version you saved, or earlier versions too. You can specify the number of backups and the folder location for backups from the

and Exporting

page of File  Preferences. The default number of backups is 200. Older copies are progressively deleted to stop your disk from filling up, so don’t use this folder to store your own backups!

Backup scores are created when you save manually, not each time Sibelius auto-saves; but unlike auto-saved scores, backup scores are not deleted when you close Sibelius.

Catalog information

The

File  Info pane can be used to enter information about your score, su ch as its title, com-

poser, arranger , copyright, and so on, which is automatically used when you publish your score on the Internet (

 1.19 Exporting Scorch web pages). You will find that several fields are

already filled in if you specified title, composer, etc. at the time you created your score. The right-hand side of

File  Info shows you useful details about your score, such as the date it

was created, when it was last saved, how many pages, staves and bars it contains, and so on. The values you enter into the fields in the

File  Info pane can also be used as wildcards in text

objects throughout your score. For details on wildcards and how to use them in Sibelius,

 5.16 Wildcards.

User-editable files

Sibelius lets you create your own:

 Ideas ( 2.3 Ideas)  House styles ( 8.2 House Style)  Plug-ins ( 1.25 Working with plug-ins (Sibelius | Ultimate Only))  Worksheets ( 1.23 Worksheet Creator (Sibelius | Ultimate Only))  Arrange styles ( 3.17 Edit Arrange Styles (Sibelius | Ultimate Only))  Chord symbol libraries ( 5.8 Chord symbols)  Guitar scale diagram libraries ( 5.11 Guitar scale diagrams (Sibelius | Ultimate Only))  Text and music font equivalents ( 5.1 Working with text, 8.6 Music fonts)  Manuscript papers ( 1.21 Exporting manuscript paper (Sibelius | Ultimate Only))  Feature sets ( 1.28 Keyboard shortcuts)  Word menus ( 5.1 Working with text)

As Sibelius comes with its own sets of each of these kinds of files, any additional ones you create are saved in a location separately from those supplied with the program. The standard files included with Sibelius are non-deletable; you should not change anything inside the installation folder itself (or the application package—sometimes known as a “bundle”—on Mac), which is where they are stored.

Your own (user-editable) files are stored in specific folders inside your user account’s application data folder of your computer, the location of which will differ depending on the operating system you are using:

 Windows: C:\Users\username\Application Data\Avid\Sibelius\



Mac OS X: /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Avid/Sibelius

Saving

1.1 Working with files

On Windows, you can go quickly to this location by clicking the in the

Sibelius program group in your Start menu. The application data folder is hidden by

Sibelius (User Data) shortcut

default and will not be otherwise visible in Windows Explorer. If you wish to access this folder via Explorer, go to Click the

View tab and from the Files and Folders list choose Show hidden files and folders.

Control Panel and click Folder Options from any open Explorer window.

Inside the Sibelius application data folder you will find various folders who se names indicate the content they contain. (On Mac, it is possible for there to be no folders at all, as they are only created when you create or edit a file that is saved in that location.)

You can copy any appropriate file to the user area directories and Sibelius will use it when you next start the program. Files you have added or created can also be deleted with no ill sideeffects.

Scorch templates and textures

You can create your own Scorch templates and paper/desk textures. Place them inside the relevant folder in the application data folder, and Sibelius will detect them. Scorch templates go in the folder called called

Textures.

Scorch templates, and textures (in Windows BMP format only) in the folder

Quick Look (Mac only)

Quick Look is a feature built in to Mac OS X that allows you to preview instantly the contents of your documents directly from the Finder, without having to wait while you open the applications that created them: simply select the document in the Finder, and hit

Space. Many docu-

ments also show thumbnail previews on the desktop and in Finder windows, and if you set Finder windows to use Cover Flow, you can flip through folders of documents very quickly.

Sibelius fully supports Quick Look, so instead of the usual document icon, you will see a thumbnail of the first page o f the score: select it and hit

Space (or click the Quick Look icon in

the Finder) to see a larger preview of the score. You can scroll through pages by grab bing the scroll bar at the right-hand side of the preview.

Spotlight (Mac only)

Spotlight is Mac OS X’s built-in search engine. Simply click the Spotlight icon at the top righthand corner of the screen, or type the keyboard shortcut

-Space, and type the search term

you’re looking for. You can search for Sibelius scores using Spotlight, simply by typing the filename, or indeed any bit of text you know is contained within (e.g. title, composer, lyrics, instrument names, and so on). Once you’ve found one or more scores, simply hit

Space to pre-

view it using Quick Look (see above), or double-click to open it in Sibelius.

1.2 Sharing and emailing files

It’s easy to share music you have written in Sibelius with other people. To learn more about how you can easily publish and share your music online (including as

audio tracks or videos), see

Sharing files with other users of Sibelius

If the person you are working with also has Sibelius, then simply sen d the file by email, or on removable media such as a USB flash drive or CD-R.

Find out what version of Sibelius the person you’re sending files to is using. If they have the same or a later version of Sibelius as you, you can simply save your file as normal and send it to them. If, however, they have an earlier version of Sibelius (or are using an earlier version of Sibelius Student or Sibelius First), you will need to export your score in an earlier file format before emailing. Fortunately, Sibelius makes this very easy—

Sharing files with people who don’t use Sibelius

If the recipient doesn’t have Sibelius, you can:

 Share scores with Sibelius | Cloud Sharing— 2.12 Sibelius | Cloud Sharing.  If the recipient has an iPad, ask them to download and install the Avid Scorch app. Save and

attach your score to an email for them to open on their device—

Scorch

 Export a PDF of your score and send it to them— 1.20 Exporting PDF files.  If the recipient has another music program and wants to listen to and perhaps edit your

music, send them a MIDI file ( file (

 1.16 Exporting MusicXML files).

 If you want to send your music to somebody el se so they can hear it, but you don’t need

them to see the score, you could also export an audio file from Sibelius and then eith er burn it to an audio CD or compress it into an MP3 file and send it via email—

audio files

 If you want to send your music to somebody else so they can hear it , and you do need them

to see the score, you can export a video file from Sibelius—

 If you want to publish your music online for people to view and prin t—or use a video- or

audio-sharing service—Sibelius can export a suitable file and upload it directly to your Score Exchange account—

 1.3 Sharing on the web.

Sending files via email below.

 1.18 Exporting to Avid

 1.15 Exporting MIDI files) or, preferably, a MusicXML

 1.12 Exporting

 1.13 Exporting video files.

 1.3 Sharing on the web.

Sending files via email

Sending files by email is very easy, using Sibelius’s built-in emailing feature. Sim ply choose

File Share  Send Using Email and enter your email address at the top o f the pane, then type

the email address of the person you want to send your score to, along with an y message you wish to send, and click the

Send Email button:

By default, Sibelius also sends a copy of the email and attachments to your email address, which allows you to keep track of emails you’ve sent previously— if you would rather not receive copies of the emails you send in this way , simply uncheck

Send me a copy of this email.

Using the various options above the message details, yo u can choo se to sen d an y combi nation of:

 A Sibelius score.  A file for opening in a previous version of Sibelius.  PDF files of the score and or parts.

By default, Sibelius sends a Sibelius score and a PDF file (of the score only). If you choose to send a file for opening in an earlier version, you can choose which version (as

far back as Sibelius 2) from the drop-down list. When you send the email, Sibelius exports a copy of the score in the earlier format and attaches it to the email.

If you choose to send a PDF file, you can choose from three options:

 Score only exports only the full score.  Score and all parts (one file) exports the full score and a single copy of each part into a single

PDF file.

 All parts only (separate files) exports a single copy of each part, with a separate PDF file for

each part.

1.2 Sharing and emailing files

In each case, the exported PDF files are attached to the email that will be sent when you click

Send Email. To learn more about exporting PDF files of your score— 1.20 Exporting PDF

files

If you wish to send an email in this way to more than one recipient, type their email addresses separated by semicolons, like this:

ent3@example.com

and so on.

recipient1@example.com; recipient2@example.com; recipi-

When sending emails in this manner from Sibelius, please be considerate towards others and do not send any materials that might be thought of as “spam” or which are abusive, illegal, obscene or threatening in any way.

You may not use this service to violate copyright or any other property right and you should not make false or misleading statements of fact or misrepresentations of the origin of the material you are sending.

Sending files via email from another program

If you prefer to send email from your own email program—or if you’ve chosen to export a score optimized for viewing in the Avid Scorch app—it’s still very easy, but the exact procedure differs according to the email program you use:

 Windows Mail, Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird: start a new message, then click the

Attach button (with a paperclip icon), find the file and click Attach to attach it to the mes-

sage. Then send it as normal.

 Apple Mail: start a new message, then simply drag and drop the file you want to attach to the

message into the message window, and send it as normal. If you don’t use any of the above programs, consult the documentation for your particular email client for details on sending file attachments.

Files on Windows or Mac

Sibelius for Windows and Sibelius for Mac use exactly the same file format. You can move a Sibelius score between Mac and Windows without any conversion at all—see below.

Both file formats use Unicode, a standard international character set, which means that special characters (like accented letters) are automatically translated between Mac and Windows. Music and text fonts are also substituted intelligently.

Sibelius files have a

.sib extension. On Mac, Sibelius files are also of kind “Sibelius docu-

ment” (internally the Creator is “SIBE” and the Type is “SIBL”).

Opening Mac scores on Windows

If you are trying to open a score created on the Mac given to you on a CD-R or another disk, make sure the disk is formatted for Windows—although the Mac can read Windows disks, Windows cannot read Mac disks.

To open the file in Sibelius for W indows, you may have to add the file extension

.sib. Although

Sibelius adds this file extension by default on both Windows and Mac, some Mac users prefer not to use file extensions; this causes a problem on Windows, because the file extension tells Windows this is a Sibelius file.

You can add the file extension in Windows by right-clicking on the file icon (in My Computer or Windows Explorer) and selecting

Rename. Change the extension, and then hit Return (on the

main keyboard). You may be prompted that changing file types can render them unusable, because Windows assumes that you don’t know what you’re doing. If asked whether you are sure you wish to proceed, click

Yes.

Once you have renamed the file, you can open it in the usual way by double-clicking.

Opening Windows scores on Mac

To open a file created using Sibelius for Windows, simply choose

File  Open and double-click

the name of the file in the dialog.

1.3 Sharing on the web

The File  Share page h ouses all of Sibelius’ features for sharing and publishing your music via email and online publishing using Score Exchange.

From here you can choose to send an email directly from within Sibelius, with your score attached in a choice of formats.

Share video using Sibelius’s video export or export an audio track of your score to share. Integration with Score Exchange allows you to publish scores online.

You can also share scores with Sibelius | Cloud Sharing—

Of course, Sibelius also offers the ability to print ( MusicXML or PDF (

1.20 Exporting PDF files), and create audio and video files on disk ( 1.12 Exporting audio files

, 1.13 Exporting video files).

You can also export your scores to the Avid Scorch mobile app and take them anywhere (

 1.18 Exporting to Avid Scorch).

 1.15 Exporting MIDI files, 1.16 Exporting MusicXML files,

 2.12 Sibelius | Cloud Sharing.

 1.11 Printing), expo rt scores as MIDI,

Send Using Email

The

File  Share  Send Using Email pane contains options for sending your score as an email

attachment in a choice of formats, all without ever having to leave Sibelius. For full details on this, see

Publishing for others to view, purchase and print

Sibelius allows you to upload and publish your scores as digital sheet music to ScoreExchange.com.

Score Exchange is a web site for finding and purchasing new sheet music from composers and arrangers all over the world. ScoreExchange.com offers thousands of scores for every instrumentation imaginable—from solo pieces to works for full orchestra, from classical to pop.

With Score Exchange you can upload, publicize, sell or give away your musical compositions and arrangements. For more details, visit

Sending files via email on page 36.

www.scoreexchange.com.

File  Share  Publish to Score Exchange pane contains options for preparing and sending

The your score to your ScoreExchange.com account. (If you don’t already have an account, click the

Enter the email address and password you used to create your Score Exchange account and

click before clicking

when you next run the program, you will automatically be signed into your account.) Under the

Score Info heading, you can see at a glance which of the fields in the File  Info tab

you’ve already completed, which is useful as Score Exchange is able to use this information to tell people more details about your score once you’ve uploaded it.

You will also see a list of the instrumental parts created automatically by Sibelius for every instrument in your score. You can choose whether these should be remov ed from the file you upload to ScoreExchange.com; all parts are included by default. These parts can then be made available separately to purchase or download.

When you click the

Publish button, Sibelius will open your web browser and take you to

ScoreExchange.com where you can provide additional details about your score to make it easier to find—or you can choose to hide the score from public view until it’s ready.

1.4 Starting a new score

There are several ways of starting a new score in Sibelius: you can import music from another program in MusicXML or MIDI format, scan printed music with PhotoScore, or input music using a microphone with AudioScore.

You can start a score from scratch in one of two ways:

 With no score open, click the New tab in the Quick Start window; or  With a score already open, choose the File tab, and click the New button,

or type the shortcut

Manuscript paper

In either case, you will end up looking at a list of templates, called manuscript pap ers, organized into folders, and showing a thumbnail view of each one. The preset manuscript paper choices have various combinations of instruments, along with other less obvious settings to improve the look and playback of your score. You do not have to use the instruments exactly as provided—feel free to delete instruments or add new ones.

It’s better to use a manuscript paper containing instruments than to start with a blank page, even if the instrumentation isn’t exactly right, because various other options are already set for you in the manuscript papers appropriate for the particular type of music.

Sibelius | First and Sibelius provide a limited number of presets that cannot be edited. Sibelius | Ultimate provides more than 60 predefined manuscript papers, which can be edited, or you can create your own.

Manuscript paper presets are categorized as follows:

 No category: Basic templates for Treble staff, Bass staff and Blank, which has no preset instru-

ments

 Band: a range of manuscript papers suitable for brass band, concert band, and school bands  Chamber Groups: brass, wind and string trio, quartet and quintet templates  Choral and Song: various Choir manuscript papers are included, some (called reduction) with

the singers reduced onto two staves (“closed score”), some with organ or piano accompani-

ment, plus Voice + keyboard for piano/vocal music

 Handbells: templates for handbells written on one staff and two staves  Jazz: a number of suitable templates using “handwritten” house styles, includ ing Big band

and Jazz quartet

 Latin

: Mariachi band and Salsa band templates

 Marching Band and Percussion: templates for drum corps battery (percussion) and brass, plus

larger marching and military band ensembles

 Orchestral: Classical, Romantic, Modern, concert, string and film orchestras are all included.

The

Orchestra, film manuscript paper was designed by The Simpsons composer Alf Clausen

and his son Kyle Clausen.

 Orff Instruments: templates for Orff classroom groups  Rock and Pop: templates for guitar-driven pop groups and R & B bands  Solo Instruments: various manuscript papers for guitar notation and tab, including Lute

tablature

, plus Piano and Lead sheet.

Ctrl+N or N.

T o browse through the categories more quickly, you can collapse a category by clicking its title bar, or hold

Shift and click any heading to collapse or expand all of the categories at once.

If you want to create an educational worksheet from scratch, it’s usually easiest to start off not from one of these manuscript papers, but rather by choosing a template from

Worksheet Creator

— 1.23 Worksheet Creator (Sibelius | Ultimate Only).

File  Teaching 

You th Sibelius | Ultimate, you can also create your own manuscript papers—

 1.21 Exporting manuscript paper (Sibelius | Ultimate Only).

Setting up your score

To get started with your score right away without modifying the instruments it contains, or setting an initial key or time signature, simply double-clic k your chosen manuscript paper. To modify the manuscript paper, click it just once, and you will see a zoomed-in version of the template, together with some options to its right.

Using the options on the right you can modify the page size, orientation, instrument s to be used, individual staff sizes, time signature, key signature, initial tempo, and, if you’re really planning ahead, even specify the title and composer of the piece.

You can always add or change any element that you added when you created the score later, so don’t feel any pressure. For now, you can make as many or as few of these decisions as you like, and to get started on the score itself, click

Create at any time.

1.5 Opening files from previous versions

Sibelius is fully backwards compatible. Sibelius can open files from all previous versions of Sibelius for Windows and Mac, including files saved in Sibelius Student, Sibelius First and G7. Simply choose score as normal.

Update Score dialog

As each new version of Sibelius comes with a new set of features, when opening a scor e created in Sibelius 5 or earlier you will be presented with the can choose which aspects, if any, of your score you wish to update. (You will only be able to choose options that were not available in the version of Sibelius that your score was saved in.)

The options on the main important, and do the following:

 Create dynamic parts will create a default set of dynamic

parts if is switched on (

 Use same sounds as previous version (where possible)

allows you to choose whether Sibelius should attempt to

retain the same sound for each staff in your score as was

used to play it back in Sibelius 4 or earlier. This option

will only take effect if you have compatible sound sets

installed for the devices you were using when you were

working on the score in your previous version.

 Play repeats determines whether Sibelius should pay attention to an y repeat barlines in the

score. Normally this checkbox will be disabled, since the option has been switched on by

default in all but the earliest versions of Sibelius, but if it is enabled, you should switch it on

to ensure correct playback and display of bar numbers in the score.

 Keep custom beam groupings determines whether Sibelius should retain any individual edits

made to beam groups in the score. Normally this checkbox should be left on to ensure that

beam groups are not changed when you open the score: if you subsequently want to reset the

beam groups to their new defaults, use

( 4.15 Beam groups).

 Use Magnetic Layout allows you to enable automatic collision avoidance for your score. You

should leave this option switched on: if you subseq uently want to disable Magnetic Lay out

in your score, simply switch off

 Convert chord symbol text updates text-based chord symbols from Sibelius 5 and earlier into

newer, more intelligent chord symbol objects. Their original appearance will be retained

until you select them and choose

symbols that use one of Sibelius’s own chord symbol fonts; if you used a chord symbol font

not supplied with Sibelius, it will be unable to convert them ( Clicking the

appearance of your score:

File  Open, or cli ck Open Other in the Quick Start window, and open the

Update Score dialog so you

Update Score dialog are the most

 9.1 Working with parts).

Appearance  Reset Notes  Beam Groups

Layout  Magnetic Layout ( 7.5 Magnetic Layout).

Layout  Reset Design. Sibelius is only able to update chord

 5.8 Chord symbols).

More Options button allows you to use new options that may improve the

 Magnetic slurs on normal notes makes slurs above or below normal notes m agnetic, so that

either end of each slur is attached to the closest note or chord (

 Magnetic slurs on cross-staff notes works similarly, but applies only to slurs on cross-staff

notes (e.g. in keyboard music) (

 Version 1.3 stem length rule makes the stems of notes on or either side of the middle line 0.25

 4.8 Slurs)

spaces longer than with the option off, which many engravers and publishers prefer

 Sibelius’s voice positioning rule was improved in Sibelius 2, so to apply the new rule to older

scores, switch on

 Magnetic tuplets ensures that the numbers and brackets of tuplets are positioned correctly

Version 2 voice positioning rule ( 3.15 Voices)

above or below the notes of the tuplet according to their position on the staff (

 3.10 Triplets and other tuplets)



Adjust note spelling in transposing instruments in re mote keys

notes in transposing instruments will be enh arm o ni call y cor rect (

 Allow note and staff spacings to be contracted takes advantage of the improvements in Sibel-

makes sure that the spelling of

 2.4 Instruments

)

ius’s spacing algorithms to tighten the horizontal and vertical spacing of older scores (

 8.3 Note spacing)  Optical beam positions applies Optical beam positions ( 4.16 Beam positions)  Optical ties applies Optical tie positions ( 4.27 Ties)  Optical note spacing overrides any manual adjustments made to note spacing in your score

and applies Sibelius’s Optical rule (

 Hidden notes and rests don’t affect stem directions and rests should be switched on, unless you

 8.3 Note spacing)

know you have flipped stems and changed the vertical position of rests in the score and want those changes to be retained.

 Version 5 vertical text positioning rule should be switched on, unless you know you have

adjusted the vertical position of text objects (such as bar numbers) to compensate for the text appearing too close to the staff following instrument changes along a staff that change the number of staff lines.

 Adjust stem lengths to avoid beamed rests applies an improved rule for the position of beams,

moving them such that they don’t collide with rests (

 Draw automatic cautionary accidentals enables Sibelius’s automatic cautionary accidentals

 4.16 Beam positions).

feature, which shows a cautionary accidental for a note in the preceding bar with an accidental (

 4.20 Accidentals).

 Position slurs on mixed stem notes above the notes applies an improved rule for the direction

of slurs: if all of the notes under the compass of the slur have stems pointing upwards, the slur will curve below the notes; if any of the notes have stems pointin g downwards, the slur will curve above the notes (

 Extend tuplet brackets to last note in tuplet resets the duration of tuplets to use improved posi-

tioning for the left- and right-hand ends of tuplet brackets (

tuplets

 4.8 Slurs).

 3.10 Triplets and other

Other settings to consider

There are a number of more subtle settings that you may want to consider after opening a score created in a previous version of Sibelius:

 For articulations, switching on New articulation positioning rule on the Articulations page of

House Style  Engraving Rules is recommended. This option will change the position of artic-

ulations that appear outside the staff on stem-down notes above the middle line of the staff, and will also change the position of articulations (e.g. staccato, tenuto) inside the staff on stem-up notes above the middle line of the staff (e.g. flipped notes). If yo u have previously

1.5 Opening files from previous versions

dragged any articulations in order to achieve correct positioning, you sh ould select those notes and use

Layout  Reset Position to see the effect of the New articulation positioning rule.

Also, if you prefer to follow the convention whereby accents should be positioned inside slurs, switch on the appropriate Inside slur checkbox for that articulation.

 For accidentals, in addition to switching on the automatic cautionary accidentals options on

the

Accidentals page of House Style  Engraving Rules, you may also want to switch off Reset

accidentals to current key signature on clef change

on the Clefs and Key Signatures page, which ensures that notes following mid-bar clef changes follow the normal conventions regarding accidentals prior to the clef change in the same bar.

 For staff spacing, consider switching off Justify both staves of grand staff instruments and set-

ting up values for the new n

Engraving Rules

 For dynamics on vocal staves, switch on the new Vocal staff option in the Edit Instrument

extra spaces… options on the Staves page of House Style 

dialog for the vocal instruments in your score, then switch on the new Different default

position on vocal staves

checkbox in House Style  Default Positions for Expression text and the various hairpin line styles and set suitable values to position them above the staff by default.

 For Magnetic Layout, you may find that selecting objects and choose Layout  Reset Position

substantially improves the appearance of your score.

The majority of the above options can be set quickly to their recommended settings by importing one of the supplied house styles—

 8.2 House St yle.

1.6 Opening MIDI files

If you don’t know much about MIDI,  6.14 MIDI for beginners, which explains what MIDI files are. If you’re wondering where you can get MIDI files from, see below.

Importing a MIDI file

Open a MIDI file just like a normal Sibelius file: simply choose

O), locate the file (on Windows, MIDI files usually have the file extension .mid), and click Open.

A dialog appears with importing options you can set (detailed below ). Normally, you should just click

Some MIDI files contain no program changes (even though they contain instrument names), which means that the instruments have to be guessed. If so, Sibelius warn s you that the instrument names, sounds, clefs, and other details may be wrong. You should either adjust the instrument’s clef etc. by hand, or (preferably) make or obtain a copy of the MIDI file that does contain the necessary program change information, and import that MIDI file instead.

If you find that the imported MIDI file doesn’t look as good as you had hoped, try changing some of the import settings—see

Once the MIDI file is imported you can play back, edit, save, print and create parts from it just as if you’d inputted the music yourself. Imported MIDI files play back with every nu ance of the original sequence—the exact velocity and timing of each note—thanks to Sibelius’s Live Playback feature (

OK, and then wait a few seconds for the MIDI file to open.

Import options below.

 6.5 Live Playback).

Downloading MIDI files

File  Open (shortcut Ctrl+O or

Import options

The options on the

 MIDI file uses this sound set allows you to specify whether the program and bank numbers

use General MIDI or another sound set. This helps Sibelius guess what the instrument s are. Normally you can leave this option at General MIDI, or switch it off altogether if you simply want to import the MIDI file “as is.”

 Only one staff per track is useful if you open a MIDI file which notates a piano (say) as two

separate piano tracks, one for the left hand and another for the right hand. Swit ch on this

MIDI File tab of the Open MIDI File dialog are as follows:

option and each hand will be written as one staff, not two; you can then clean it up by creating a new piano and copying the two hands into it. Finally, delete the original two pianos.

 Keep track order is switched off by default; this makes Sibelius choose the order of the

instruments. Switch it on to keep the instruments in the same order as the tracks in the MIDI file.

 Keep track names makes Sibelius use the name of each track as the instrument name; switch

it off to use the default instrument names for the instruments Sibelius guesses

 Hide empty staves is switched on by default; this makes Sibelius hide empty staves through-

out the resulting score, which is often useful because many MIDI files have tracks that are empty except for short passages; as a result, hiding empty staves can make the score easier to read

 Import markers as hit points makes Sibelius convert all markers in the MIDI file into hit

points in the score it creates. When switched off, Sibelius will import the markers as standard text objects.

 Use frame rate from SMPTE header tells Sibelius to set the frame rate settings in Play  Video

and Time 

offset

 Use tab for guitars specifies whether Sibelius should import any guitar tracks in the MIDI file

Timecode and Duration according to the settings in the MIDI file—see SMPTE

below.

onto tab staves; if the option is switched off, guitars will be imported onto notation staves

 Use multiple voices determines whether Sibelius should use two voices where appropriate to

produce cleaner notation; normally this option should be switched on

 Show metronome marks makes all metronome marks visible. If there are lots of changes of

tempo (e.g. rits. and accels.) then you may want to switch this option off, which will hide the metronome marks in the score, making it look cleaner but still playing back the same.

 The Document Setup option s allow you to choose the Page size, House style and orientation

(

Portrait or Landscape) of the resulting score.

For details of the options on the

Notation tab, see Flexi-time options on page 294.

Recommended import options

The precise combination of options you should choose in the

Open MIDI file dialog will

depend on a number of different factors, for example:

 If you are importing a MIDI file to create clean notation, you should switch off the Notation

tab options to notate staccatos and tenutos, and try a number of different Minimum note value settings until you get the cleanest result

 If you are importing a MIDI file for playback only, it doesn’t matter which options you

choose, as Sibelius will always play back the MIDI file exactly as it sounds, using Live Playback

 If you are importing a file created by someone else, probably on a different device (e.g. a

MIDI file you have downloaded from the Internet), you should set

set

to the device it was created for

 If you are importing a file that you know uses the General MIDI sound set, make sure you

have chosen

General MIDI under MIDI file uses this sound set.

MIDI file uses this sound

The default Notation tab settings work well in most cases, as follows: Adjust rhythms on, Mini-

mum note value

sixteenth note (semiquaver), Staccato and Tenuto on. If you are reading a MIDI

file in which the rhythms are completely exact (if it’s already quantized, say), switch

rhythms

If you set

off.

Minimum note value unrealistically long—e.g. if it’s set to eighth notes (quavers)

when the MIDI file contains long runs of sixteenth notes (semiqu avers)—Sibelius obviously

Adjust

1.6 Opening MIDI files

can’t render the runs properly using eighth notes and may be forced to produce junk. (Sibelius will have to approximate the runs of sixteenth notes using tup lets of eig hth notes or by joining some pairs of sixteenth notes together to form eighth note chords.)

The tuplet options are up to you:

 Simple means tuplets are notated only if they contain equal note values  Moderate and Complex for more irregular rhythms.

Remember that if a particular tuplet (say a triplet) is used in a MIDI file, you must set this option to at least the tuplets to

Simple, or it won’t be read correctly! Beware however that if, say, you set all

Complex, Sibelius may discover elaborate tuplet rhythms where you weren’t

expecting them, so be cautious.

Batch conversion

Sibelius includes a plug-in to convert a complete folder full of MIDI files at once. To use it, choose the folder to convert; find it and click

Home  Plug-ins  Batch Processing  Convert Folder of MIDI Files. You are asked to find

OK. All MIDI files in the folder w ill be converted to

Sibelius files.

Cleaning up MIDI files

Because MIDI files don’t contain any notation data, they can end up looking a little messy after opening them in Sibelius. Here are some hints for getting better results, both before and after conversion:

 If the MIDI file uses non-standard program numbers (e.g. if it is set up to play on an unusual

MIDI device), Sibelius will not be able to identify the instruments correctly and they may appear with unexpected characteristics, such as with the wrong clefs or in the wrong order. Similarly, if the MIDI file uses channel 10 for pitched instruments, these may be imported by Sibelius as percussion instruments. This depends on whether or not you selected an appropriate MIDI device when opening the MIDI file.

 If this happens, try importing the file again, changing the MIDI file uses this sound set setting  If the MIDI file is not fully or properly quantized, you may find that the rhythms are not

notated as cleanly as you might expect. If you have access to a sequencer, you could try requantizing the file and opening it in Sibelius again. Alternatively, try using

Flexi-time 

gently (see

Renotate Performance, which can both revoice and requantize the music intelli-

Cleaning up after Flexi-time on page 292 for more details).

Note Input 

The kind of cleaning up that is most commonly required after opening a MIDI file is making unpitched percussion staves more legible—

 4.13 Percussion for more details.

When Sibelius imports unpitched percussion in a MIDI file, each drum sound is converted to the notehead and staff position (i.e. line or space) defined in the

5 lines (drum set) instrument. If

a drum sound is used where the notation isn’t defined in this instrument type, Sibel ius makes up a notation using normal, cross and diamond noteheads in empty positions on the staff.

Sometimes you may find that you end up with unwanted rests between notes, or with unwanted unisons (two noteheads sharing the same pitch). Use the

plify Notation 

 1.25 Working with plug-ins (Sibelius | Ultimate Only).

Remove Rests and Remove Unison Notes plug-ins to correct this—

Note Input  Plug-ins  Sim-

SMPTE offset

The MIDI SMPTE offset event is imported (if present) and sets

and Time 

Timecode and Duration dialog. It can also be used to set the frame rate to be used for

Start Time in the Play  Video

timecode in the score; however, because the MIDI SMPTE offset event doesn’t describe all of

the frame rate formats used by all sequencer programs, if you know the frame rate you actually want to use, choose

Set frame rate on the MIDI File page of the Open MIDI File dialog, and

select the desired frame rate from the menu instead. (If you have no idea what any of this means, don’t worry—just leave these options as they are.)

Technical details

Sibelius imports MIDI files of t yp es 0 and 1. When importing, Sibelius intelligently works out which instruments to use (using track names if they are present, otherwise using the sounds), and is able to distinguish between, say, Violin and Viola, Clarinet and Bass Clarinet, or Soprano and Alto by the range of the music in each track. Sibelius cleans up the rhythm using the Flexi-time algorithm, and retains as much or as little MIDI message data as you specify (e.g. metronome marks, program changes and so on). Sibelius also automatically reduces the staff size if there are too many instruments for the page size.

Downloading MIDI files

There are many online resources for MIDI files. If you are looking for a particular piece, you can try a search using

www.google.com, e.g. typing the name of the piece followed by the

words “MIDI file.” Or you could try visiting one of the following sites:

 www.prs.net: more than 16,000 or so classical music files, all public domain  www.musicrobot.com: a search engine for locating pop music MIDI files on the web  www.cpdl.org: an excell ent choral music public domain site with thousands of files  www.cyberhymnal.org: every major hymn tune, with downloadable lyrics too.

Not all the files on these sites are in MIDI format—some may be in Finale, PDF or another format. Some may even be in an audio format, like MP3, which cannot be opened by Sibelius. So look carefully to see what the actual format of the file is, before you try and download it. (Sibelius can, however, open files in various formats—check the other topics in this chapter for details.)

Once you’ve found the MIDI file you’re looking for in y our web browser, identify the link to download it; links are normally underlined. Do not click on the link directly, as that will simply make the MIDI file play inside your web browser: we want to download it, not play it. Instead:

 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) the link, and a menu will appear.  Choose Save Link As, Save Target As or Download Link (the exact wording depends on which

web browser you are using)

 Depending on your web browser, you may be prompted to choose where to save the file, in

which case choose somewhere easy to remember, like your Desktop

 Now the file will be downloaded. MIDI files are normally very smal l, so this will probably

take only a second or two.

Congratulations! You’ve now d ownloaded a MIDI file—and in fact the above steps can be used to download any type of file from the web.

Make sure you know what the MIDI file is called and wh ere you saved it (normally to your Desktop), then open Sibelius, and follow the steps in

Importing a MIDI file at the start of this

topic. You should be aware that if you download or publish MIDI files of someone else’s music with-

out permission you are likely to infringe copyright. Copyright infringement is illegal.

1.6 Opening MIDI files

Most music states if it is copyright and who the copyright owner is. If you have are unsure of the copyright status of a MIDI file you have downloaded, please contact the music’s publisher, composer or arranger.

1.7 Opening MusicXML files

Sibelius’s built-in MusicXML 3.0 file convertor allows you to open MusicXML files created in a number of music applications, including Finale version 2003 and later and SharpEye.

The purpose of the file convertor is to save you time, not to convert every score so that it is identical to the original.

What is MusicXML?

MusicXML is an interchange file format for music notation applications. It provides a better way to transfer notation between different programs than other formats such as MIDI files.

Creating MusicXML files in Finale

How you create MusicXML files in Finale depends on the version of Finale you are using:

 Finale 2006 or later: choose File  MusicXML  Export



Finale 2003, 2004 or 2005 (Windows only): choose Plug-ins  MusicXML Export

If you are using Finale 2004 or Finale 2005 on Mac OS X, or are using a version earlier than Finale 2003 on Windows, you will require the separate Dolet plug-in to export MusicXML files, which can be purchased from a MusicXML file by choosing

Opening a MusicXML file

MusicXML files typically have one of two file extensions: uncompressed MusicXML files have the extension Sibelius can open MusicXML files with either extension.

Open a MusicXML file just like a normal Sibelius file: simply choose file, and click the right, with the following options:

 Use page and staff size from MusicXML file is switched on

by default if the MusicXML file you are opening is version

1.1 or later; this tells Sibelius to try and preserve the page and staff size of the MusicXML file. If you switch this off, you can set the paper size and orientation for the imported MusicXML file, and Sibelius will use the default staff size as determined by the house style chosen below in the dialog.

 Use layout and formatting from MusicXML file is also switched on by default if the

MusicXML file is version 1.1 or later; when switched on, Sibelius will try to preserve the layout and formatting (e.g. distances between staves, system and page breaks, etc.) of th e original MusicXML file. If you switch this off, Sibelius will effectively unlock the format of the resulting score, using its default layout and formatting.

 House style allows you to import a specific house style into the resulting score; if you leave

this set to style, note that the page size and staff size specified in the house style will not be used in the resulting score unless you switch off

 Let Sibelius choose instruments tells Sibelius to attempt to automatical ly identify the instru-

ments in the MusicXML file. If you find that Sibelius creates the wrong instruments, import

.xml, and compressed MusicXML 2.0 or later files have the extension .mxl.

File  Open (shortcut Ctrl+O or O), locate the

Open. Sibelius will show a dialog, shown on

Unchanged, Sibelius will use its default house style. If you choose another house

www.recordare.com. If you are using Dolet, you can export

Plug-ins  MusicXML  Export MusicXML.

Use page and staff size from MusicXML file.

the file again, and switch this option off, which will prompt Sibelius to show you the following dialog after you click

 Instruments in file at the left-hand side shows the individual parts in the MusicXML file  In the order that the staves are displayed in the Instruments in file list, choose the Sibelius

instruments you want to use for each part (rather like in the double-click the instrument or click

OK:

Instruments dialog); either

Add to add it to the Instruments to create list at the

right-hand side of the dialog.

 When all of the parts have been mapped onto Sibelius instruments, the OK button

becomes enabled; click this to finish opening the file.

 Use instrument names from MusicXML file tells Sibelius to set the instrument names at the

start of systems to the names specified in the MusicXML file. If you want Sibelius to use its own default instrument names instead, switch this option off.

When you have set the options as you wish, click

OK, and the MusicXML file will be

imported. You can then check and edit the file as necessary.

Warning messages

Some MusicXML files may contain errors, which will be displayed in a dialog listing each error and the location at which it occurred in the file you are opening. Each error may be one of three kinds:

 Fatal errors: if the file is not valid XML, this is a fatal error, and it cannot be opened at all  Validation errors: if the file is valid XML, but the specific syntax of the MusicXML ele-

ments contains errors or inconsistencies, then Sibelius will attempt to open the file, but the resulting score may have unexpected problems in it, and you should proceed with caution

 Warnings: the XML validator sometimes reports warnings about the XM L files when they

are opened. These should not normally prevent the file from opening correctly.

Importing MusicXML files saved in a sequencer

Sibelius’s MusicXML importer is optimized to give the best results when opening MusicXML files saved directly from Finale or using Finale’s Dolet plug-in. In extreme circumstances, some MusicXML files, especially those created in sequencers with no notation capabilities, may fail to produce any legible notation at all.

Supported versions

Sibelius’s MusicXML converter is based around MusicXML 3.0. Files created in earlier MusicXML formats open correctly, provided they are valid. Files created with future versions of MusicXML should also open, though new features will not be imported.

1.7 Opening MusicXML files

Sibelius can only open MusicXML files that use the T ype Definition). If your file uses the

timewise.dtd DTD, you will need to use XSLT to convert

partwise.dtd top-level DTD (Document

your timewise MusicXML file into a partwise MusicXML file.

Batch conversion

Sibelius includes a plug-in to convert a complete folder full of MusicXML files at once. To use it, choose

Home  Plug-ins  Batch Processing  Convert Folder of MusicXML Files.

Sibelius converts each MusicXML file it finds in the specified folder, saving each one as a Sibelius score under the same filename as the original M usicXML file.

Limitations

The limitations of Sibelius’s MusicXML import feature are summarized below:

Feature Limitation Articulations Some articulations may be positioned on the wrong side of a note or chord.

Barlines If different staves have different barline types simultaneously, Sibelius will use the barline type of the

Beams Sub-beams do not import. Chord symbols

Clefs Special percussion and tab clefs available in MusicXML will be replaced with the closest matching clef

Cross-stave notes MusicXML files that use a number of voices across staves may import some notes on the wrong staff.

End repeat lines The positioning of end repeat lines may need manual adjustment after they have been imported. Key signatures

Layout Sibelius can only use one page size for the entire score being imported.

Lyrics Metronome marks Metronome marks containing 256th, 128th, 64th and long (breve) notes are not imported by Sibelius.

Ornaments Some ornaments will not be imported. Mordents, trills and turns are imported. Rests Extra rests resulting from m ultiple voices on the same sta ff are automatically removed, but som e extra

Slur

Symbols Symbols are not imported. Staves Changes of staff type are not imported. Stems

technical and ornaments elements are not imported.

The

uppermost part.

Heavy, heavy-light and heavy-heavy barlines are not imported.

Some chord symbols may not be imported (when they are using a MusicXML specifies that all chord symbols go above the top staff in a part only. The

kind instances Neapolitan, Italian, French, German, pedal (pedal-point bass) and

function element).

Tri st an are all imported as major chords.

function element is not present in the harmony element, the chord symbol is not imported.

If the

available in Sibelius. MusicXML is not capable of differentiating between clefs at the start or end of a bar.

Files containing chords with notes in different staves are not imported correctly.

major and minor modes are recognized for the mode element.

Only

fifths element is missing, the key signature will be imported as an atonal key signature.

If the

key child elements (e.g. key-step and key-alter) are ignored.

Other If a part has more than one staff, key signatures may be omitted from one or more of those staves. Key signatures that fall after the barline in some other music notation programs may fall behind the barline in Sibelius.

Objects that are only graphically offset in the file may have an impact on playback in Sibelius.

laughing, humming, end-line, end-paragraph and editorial elements are ignored.

The

All metronome marks adopt Sibelius’s default positions. Only metronome marks in the top staff of the uppermost part are read by the XML importer. Metronome marks may be duplicated if the uppermost part in the file has more than one staff.

rests may still occur, e.g. in cross-staff passages.

continue attribute is not imported.

The The entity attributes

position and bezier are not imported.

placement and orientation are not imported.

The stem values

none and double are not imported.

Feature Limitation Text

Ties

Time signatures Sibelius will not import compound time signatures (e.g. 2/4 + 6/8), but beat divisions that occur only in the

Some text items are imported via the imported. Specific figured bass elements such as

directive element is not imported.

The The tie element is ignored completely; only ties specified by the tied element are imported.

number attribute is ignored.

The All ties are imported as solid ties. The

position, placement, orientation, bezier-offset, bezier-x and bezier-y attributes are n ot

imported.

numerator (e.g. 2+3 / 4) will be imported.

dynamics element, but none of the dynamics attributes are

parentheses, elision and extend are not imported.

Senza-misura elements are not imported.

single-number attribute value for symbol is not imported (if present it is imported as normal)

The If different time signatures occur in different staves simultaneously, Sibelius will use the time signatu re from the uppermost staff.

Tuplets Some versions of the Dolet plug-in for Finale don’t place the start and stop element s of tuplet s in th e right

place, which may cause tuplets to import incorrectly.

tuplet attributes placement, position, show-type, show-number, bracket and line-

The

are not imported.

shape

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

INTRODUCTION

PhotoScore Lite from Neuratron is a music scanning program designed to work with Sibelius—the musical equivalent of a text OCR (optical character recognition) program. PhotoScore Lite lets you scan up to 20 pages of music with up to 12 staves per system.

It is a sophisticated program with many ad vanced features. If you intend to scan relatively complex scores such as orchestral/band music, or scores of many pa ges, we strongly recommend that you start with more simple music until you are proficient with PhotoScore Lite, and then familiarize yourself with the

On-screen help

In addition to this topic, PhotoScore Lite has its own on-screen help: to access it, choose

Neuratron PhotoScore Help

PhotoScore First

PhotoScore First is an introductory version of PhotoScore that comes with Sibelius | First. PhotoScore Lite lets you scan 1 page of music with no more than 2 staves per system.

PhotoScore Ultimate

An advanced version of PhotoScore, called PhotoScore Ultimate, is available to buy separately, with extra features and enhancements. PhotoScore Ultimate reads many more musical markings (including tuplets, slurs, grace notes, cross-staff beaming, guitar tab, chord diagrams, repeat barlines etc.). PhotoScore Ultimate lets you scan up to 400 pages of music with up to 64 staves per system.

For details of PhotoScore Ultimate, see

(shortcut F1) from PhotoScore Lite’s menus.

ADVANCED FEATURES section.

http://www.sibelius.com/photoscore

Help 

Scanning

Scanning text is difficult for computers to do, and has only achieved reasonable accuracy in the last few years. Music scanning is much harder because of the more complicated range of symbols involved, and because of the complex two-dimensional “grammar” of music.

The difficulty with scanning music or text is that by scanning a page, a computer does not “understand” it. As far as the computer is concerned, scanning a page merely presents it with a grid of millions of black and white dots, which could be m usic, t e xt, a photograph or anything else.

The process of actually reading or interpreting music, text or pictures from th is grid of dots i s extremely complex and poorly understood. A large part of the human brain, containing many millions of connections, is devoted solely to solving this “pattern recognition” problem.

Suitable originals

PhotoScore Lite is designed to read originals that:

 Are printed rather than handwritten (and use notes with an “engraved” appearance rather

than a “handwritten” appearance, e.g. from a fake book)

 Fit on your scanner (i.e. the music itself is typically no larger than Letter/A4 size, though the

paper may be slightly larger)

 Have a staff-size of at least 0.12”/3mm  Use no more than 12 staves per page, and 2 voices per staff. (Additional staves or voices will

be omitted.)

 Are reasonably clear—for example, staff lines should be continuous and not broken or

blotchy, half note (minim) and whole note (semibreve) noteheads and flats should have a continuous circumference and not be broken or filled in, beams on sixteenth notes (semiquavers) and shorter notes should have a significant white gap in between, and objects that are meant to be separate (e.g. noteheads and their preceding accidentals) should not overlap or be blotched together.

Music that does not match the above will probably work, but with considerably reduced accuracy.

Scanning from photocopies is not particularly recommended unless the photocopier is a particularly good one, as photocopying tends to degrade the quality of an original significantly . You may be obliged to scan from a reduced photocopy if your original is bigger than your scanner, but you should expect lower accuracy.

Using PhotoScore Lite without a scanner

In addition to reading music that you scan yourself using a scanner, it is possible to “read” music without using a scanner, either by opening individual pages that you have saved as graphics files, or by opening PDF files.

To work with graphics files, you will need each page of music stored as a separate graphics file on your computer in

.bmp (bitmap) format on Windows, or TIFF and PICT (Picture file) format

on Mac. PhotoScore Lite can also read PDF files. Reading a PDF file may be useful if the music you

want to scan is available in PDF format from a web site, or if you want to convert a file from another music program by producing a PDF file and then opening it in PhotoScore Lite.

Before you decide upon using PDF files as the way of converting files from another music program, check that the program doesn’t export a file format that Sibelius can read directly, e.g. MusicXML, as this would be preferable to using PDF files.

Copyright music

You should be aware that if you scan someone else’s music without permission you are likely to infringe copyright. Copyright infringement by scanning is illegal.

Most music states if it is copyright and who the copyright owner is. If you have a piece of music that you want to scan and you are not sure about its copyright status, please contact the music’s publisher, composer or arranger.

GETTING GOING

Like Sibelius, PhotoScore Lite functions in exactly the same way on Windows and Mac. Start PhotoScore Lite by running it from the Start menu (Windows) or double-clicking its icon in the

Applications folder (Mac). Sibelius doesn’t need to be running when you use PhotoScore

Lite.

The four stages

There are four stages when using PhotoScore Lite:

 Scanning the pages or opening a PDF file. When you scan a page, PhotoScore Lite takes a

“photograph” of your original. Similarly, when you open a PDF file, PhotoScore Lite takes a “photograph” of it, so that it can read it in the next step.

 Reading the pages. This is the clever bit, where PhotoScore Lite “reads” the scanned pages

to work out what the notes and other markings are.

 Editing the resulting music. Here you correct any mistakes that PhotoScore Lite has made.

Editing within PhotoScore Lite works in much the same way as editing musi c in Sibelius.

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

Almost any marking can be corrected or input in PhotoScore Lite, but it is only essent ial at this stage to correct rhythmic mistakes—other corrections can be made after sending the score to Sibelius if you prefer.

 Sending the music to Sibelius. This is done simply by clicking on a button. After a moment

the music pops up as a Sibelius score just as if you’d inputted it all yourself.

You can then play the music back, re-arrange it, transpose it, create parts, or print it out.

Quick start

Before we examine how to use PhotoScore Lite in detail, let’s run through the process quickly to introduce the four stages.

The first step is either to scan some music, or to open a page you hav e already scanned, or to open a PDF file:

 To scan a page, choose File  Scan pages (shortcut Ctrl+W or W); your scanner interf ace

will load. Scan a page and it is added to PhotoScore’s list of scanned pages.

 To open a graphics file, choose File  Open; when prompted for the resolution the image was

scanned at, choose the appropriate setting

and click OK. The graphics file is then added to

the list of scanned pages.

 T o open a PDF file, choose File  Open PDFs. You will be prompted to choose the resolution;

normally you can leave this at the default of

300 dpi and click OK. If the PDF is password

protected, you will then be prompted to provide the passw ord. You can open more than one PDF at once, and enter the range of pages to be examined within each PDF if necessary.

As soon as you scan a page or open a PDF or graphics file, each page appears in the Pages pane, which is at the left hand of the main PhotoScore Lite window. Each page first appears under

Pending Pages, and PhotoScore Lite immediately proceeds to read the pages you have

added, Reading each page will take a little while (depending on the speed of your computer) and a green progress bar fills up behind the name of the page in the toScore Lite completes reading each page, it moves to the list below,

Pending Pages list. As Pho-

Read Pages.

When PhotoScore Lite has finished reading the pages, the main editing window will appear:

From this window you can edit any errors in the music. When you are satisfied with the corrections you have made, choose

File  Send to  Sibelius

(shortcut Ctrl+D or D) to send the music to Sibelius. If Sibelius is not already running, it will start up, and the

Open PhotoScore File dialog will

appear, which allows you to choose various options concerning which instruments will be used in the Sibelius score. Don’t worry about these now—just click

OK. Moments later, the Sibeli us

score will appear, ready for editing, just as if you had inputted it yourself.

1. SCANNING OR OPENING A PDF

Before you scan, choose own scanning interface—in which case choose face—in which case choose

File  Scanner Setup to choose whether you want to use PhotoScore’s

PhotoScore—or your scanner’s own inter-

TWAIN (scanner default)—and click OK. By default, Phot oScore

Lite will use your scanner’s own interface, which is fine, since you are presumably familiar with the way your scanner’s software works.

Next, measure the size (height) of staves in the page you wan t to scan and choose a resoluti on using the following table, and scan in black & white or gray—not color:

Staff size Resolution

0.25”/6mm or more 200 dpi

0.15-0.25”/4–6mm 300 dpi

0.12-0.15”/3–4mm 400 dpi

Reading accuracy and speed will be considerably reduced if you scan at too low or too high a resolution. So, for example, do not scan at 400 dpi unless the staves really are small.

Usually, you can choose whether to scan in black & white or grayscale (shades of gray). Scanning in gray produce significantly more accurate results—if the option is not available in your scanning dialog, consult your scanner ’s documentation.

Now you can scan your first page—try a page or two of simple keyboard music or something similar:

 Put the page of music (the “original”) into your scanner, face-down and with the top of the

page pointing away from you. Put one edge of the original flush against the raised edge of the glass. You can put the page on its side if it fits better. PhotoScore Lite will automatically rotate the

page by 90 degrees if necessary. However you should normally align the top of the page with the left edge of the scanner to ensure it does not turn out upside down. Don ’t worry though if it is scanned upside down, as it is easy to correct later on.

If you are scanning in gray, then the page does not need to be completely straight, providing that it is not more than 8 degrees off—PhotoScore Lite will automatically make the page level (to within 0.1 degrees) without loss of detail. It will still be rotated if scanning in black & white, but there will be loss of detail, and thus less accurate results.

 Choose File  Scan Pages, or click the Scan Pages button on PhotoScore Lite’s toolbar.  After a moment, the scanner will whir into life and transfer the page to your computer. (If

this doesn’t happen, see

 If you are scanning from a fairly thick book, gently press down the lid (or the book if easier)

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS below.)

during scanning to keep the page flat on the glass.

 A window will appear for you to enter a name for the pag e, which will be something like

Score 1, Page 1 by default. You can chang e this to any name you li ke (although to avoid any

unexpected results it should end with a number)—something like

Piano p1 would do—then

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

OK. Subsequent pages you scan will be automatically numbered e.g. Piano p2, and a

click dialog will not appear.

 Wait a few seconds while PhotoScore Lite makes the image level, chooses the b est bright-

ness, and locates the staves.

 PhotoScore will now be ready to scan the next page, so put the page of music in the scanner,

then click the button that tells your scanner to start scanning again, and proceed as for the first page. If the scanning interface does not reappear, simply click the

Scan Pages button

again.

 Continue until you have scanned all the pages that you want to scan.  A scan of the first page will then appear. The buff paper color indicates that you are looking

at a scanned image (a “scan”) of the original page. Check that all the staves are highlighted in blue—this shows that PhotoScore Lite has

detected where they are. If the page has systems of two or more staves, check also that the staves within each system

are joined at the left-hand end by a thick vertical (or near-vertical) red line. If not all staves are blue, or not all staves within systems are joined with a red line, you can manually tell PhotoScore Lite where they are (see (Ignore the other buttons at the top of this window, which are also explained in

FEAT URES

below.)

ADVANCED FEATURES below).

ADVANCED

Scanning summarized

Once you’ve scanned a few pages you’ll rapidly get into the routine of it. The procedure can be summarized as follows:

 Place page in scanner  Click the scanner button or choose File  Scan Pages



Choose the resolution, and whether to scan in black & white or gray

 Click Scan



If it’s the first page, enter a name for the page (or leave the default name)

 Go on to next page.

Catalog of scanned pages

It’s important for you to understand that whenever you scan a page, PhotoScore Lite adds it to a single list or “catalog” of scanned pages to be read later. You do not need to save scanned pages or the catalog—it is stored on your hard disk automatically.

This means that whenever you start using PhotoScore, it still remembers any pages you scanned previously. (You can delete pages that you no longer need to keep.)

We’l l tell you more about the catalog later.

Hints on scanning

 If you want to read a page of music smaller than the size of your scanner, you should make

sure that only that portion is scanned. Most scanner interfaces allow you to scan part of a page, usually by clicking a

Preview but-

ton to produce a thumbnail image, which may seem a little “blocky.” You can then adjust the required area by dragging from the edges of the thumbnail.

Then click

Scan to scan the selected area at high resolution. Every time you click Scan after

this, only the selected area will be scanned, until you change it.

 Ensure that all of the music on the page you are scanning is on the glass of the scanner.

It doesn’t matter if your original is larger than Letter/A4, so long as the music itself will fit onto Letter/A4.

 If you are scanning a page that is smaller than Letter/A4 size, it doesn’t matter where on the

glass you position the original. However, it helps if you put the edge of the page flush against the edge of the glass, to ensure that it’s straight.

 If you are scanning a small music book then you may be able to fit a double-page spread

(two facing pages side-by-side) on the scanner glass, but don’t try this—PhotoScore Lite can only read one page at a time. Scan each page separately.

 For simplicity, we recommend that you scan all the pages in a piece of music before reading

them all. You are allowed to scan a page, then read it, then scan another and so on (see

ADVANCED FEATURES below), but we don’t suggest you try anything like this until you

are proficient with PhotoScore Lite.

2. READING

As mentioned earlier, just scanning a page simply presents the computer with a grid of millions of black and white dots, which as far as it’s concerned could be anything from text to a photograph.

“Reading” the music is the clever bit, where PhotoScore Lite works out from the scan where and what the notes and other markings on the page are.

Pages Pane

On the left-hand side of the PhotoScore Lite window you should see the pages pane, as shown here. If you can’t see this, choose

T oggle Pages Pane

Pages that have not yet been read appear in the upper half of the pages pane, under the heading

Pending Pages. Notice how PhotoScore

Lite helpfully shows you a thumbnail of the scanned page as you hover your mouse pointer over its name.

When you want to read a page you have scanned, click the little checkbox at the right-hand side, which expands to say

Read when you

hover your mouse pointer over it. PhotoScore Lite will start to think, and the blue bar behind the name of the page will turn green as PhotoScore reads the page.

If you accidentally scanned the pages in the wrong order, you can correct the order in the list of

Pending Pages simply by clicking and drag-

ging the pages into the correct order.

If you just scanned in some pages or opened a PDF, however, your pages have probably already been read by PhotoScore Lite, and so will be found in the lower half of the pages pane, under the heading and hide the individual pages in each score by clicking the To view a page in order to edit it, click on its name under

Read Pages. The pages are automatically grouped into scores; you can show

+ or—button at the left-hand side.

Read Pages.

View 

What PhotoScore Lite reads

PhotoScore Lite reads the following musical markings:

 Notes, chords (including tail direction, beams and flags) and rests  Flats, sharps and naturals  Treble and bass clefs, key signatures, time signatures  5-line staves (normal and small), standard barlines, 6-line guitar tab  The format of the page, including the page size, staff-size, margins, and where systems end.

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

PhotoScore Ultimate, available separately, also reads text (including lyrics, dynamics, instrument names, fingering, etc.), a wider variety of clefs and accidentals, tuplets, guitar chord diagrams, and various other markings such as codas, segnos, ornaments, pedal markings and repeat endings. PhotoScore Ultimate can even read neat handwritten music!

Hints on reading

 You should not need to interrupt reading, but you can normally do so if necessary by hitting

Esc or ., or by clicking Cancel on the progress window. PhotoScore Lite will show the part

of the page it has already read. You should delete this page by choosing

Edit  Delete page

before re-scanning or re-reading the page.

 If the computer gives a warning message while reading a page, or if a page seems to be tak-

ing a very long time to read, see

 If you like, you can ask PhotoScore Lite to read just a single scan or a choice of scans

instead of the whole score; see

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS below.

ADVANCED FEATURES below.

3. EDITING

When PhotoScore Lite has finished reading the music, its interpretation of the first page pops up in a window called the output window. Here you can edit mistakes PhotoScore Lite has made.

Notice how the pages pane doesn’t appear in the picture above: in order to give yourself more room to edit the music, it’s a good idea to hide it while you edit, by choosing

Pages Pane

(shortcut Ctrl+E or E).

View  Toggle

The top part of the window (with a buff-colored background) shows you the original page. The

Full detail view window at the top right-hand corner shows a zoomed-in portion of the original

page, according to where you point your mouse. The large bottom part of the window (with a light gray background) shows PhotoScore Lite’s

interpretation of the first scan—that is, what PhotoScore Lite thinks the first page of the ori ginal says. Hence this part of the window is where PhotoScore Lite’s mistakes can occur.

At the top left of the window it says (e.g.)

Page 1 of 2, and by clicking on the arrows you can

move through all of the pages that have been read (the output score). It makes sense to edit the

first page completely, then advance to the second page and so on until the whole output score has been edited.

To the bottom right of the window is the Keypad, similar in function to Sibelius’s Keypad. This can be repositioned by clicking its title bar, and dragging.

There is a

Create menu at the top of the window, which is also similar in function to the Create

menu you can show in Sibelius by right-clicking on the score w ith no selection, though features not appropriate for PhotoScore Lite have been omitted.

What to correct

The minimum level of correction recommended before sending the output score to Sibeliu s is to correct key signatures and time signatures. Other mistakes such as pitch can be corrected in Sibelius, but correcting key signatures and time signatures is much easier in Phot oScore Lite, so we recommend you do that.

In particular, if the score you are scanning is a transposing score, you will need to correct the key signatures of the transposed instruments—to delete a single key signature, select it and type

Ctrl+Delete or -Delete. Then add the correct k ey signature to that staff alone: choose

Create  Key Signature (shortcut K), and Ctrl+click or -click the staff to which you want to

add the key signature. To correct rhythmic mistakes, add the appropriate time signature if it’s not already present:

choose

Create  Time Signature (shortcut T) and click in one of the staves to add the time signa-

ture. Once PhotoScore Lite knows the time signature, any rhythmic inaccuracies are indicated by small red notes over the barline, showing the number of missing or extra beats. As you correct the mistakes, these red notes disappear—and once your score is free of red notes, you can send it to Sibelius.

Once you are more proficient with PhotoScore Lite, you can correct the music completely in PhotoScore Lite before sending it to Sibelius. The advantage of this is that you can spot errors by looking at the scanned original on the screen instead of having to refer to it on paper.

Checking for mistakes

Check for mistakes by comparing the bottom part of the window with the original scan at the top. The top and bottom parts move about to show the region of the page the mouse is pointing at.

Avoid the temptation to compare the output page with the original music on paper—it is almost always quicker to compare with the scan on the screen.

At the top right of the output window is the full detail view windo w, which shows in close-up the part of the original that the pointer is over.

Ctrl+clicking or -clicking on th is window

makes the view larger or smaller. This window can be repositioned by clicking its title bar and dragging.

MIDI playback

Another way to check for mistakes is to have the output played back to you. Your computer will need a MIDI device attached to make use of this feature (if you have more than one attached, the default one will be used).

To play the whole page from the start, ensure that nothing is selected by clicking on an area of the page with no notation. Then choose

Play  Play/Stop (shortcut space), or click the Play but-

ton on the toolbar. Do the same to stop the music. To play from a particular point on the pag e, select an object in each of the staves you want playback from. It will commence from the start of the bar with the earliest selection.

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

By default, all the staves will play back with a piano sound, but you can change this: rightclick (Windows) or choose

Instruments from the context menu, then click Rename. You will see a dialog that looks

a little like Sibelius’s

Control-click (Mac) the names at the start of the first system (e.g. Staff 1),

Create  Instruments dialog, from which you can choose the correct name

(and therefore the sound) used by that staff. While the music is playing, the currently played bars will be highlighted in gray.

4. SENDING TO SIBELIUS

Once you have edited all the pages in the score, you should send them to Sibelius. Choose

File  Send to  Sibelius (shortcut Ctrl+D

or D), or simply click the little icon next to the Save button at the top of the output window.

If Sibelius isn’t already running, it will start, and the

PhotoScore or AudioScore File  This is a transposing score: switch on this option if your score

dialog will appear:

Open

contains transposing instruments, and you will be prompted to choose the correct instruments when you click

 Use default instruments

: opens the file without trying to work out

which instruments are used in the score

 Choose instruments: allows the user to choose an instrument for

each staff in the score from a dialog similar to the usual

Instruments dialog; choose the staff

in the scanned music that you want to replace with a Sibelius instrument, then click normal. If you add an instrument that normally uses two staves (such as a piano), this will ‘use up’ two of the staves in the left-most list on the dialog.

 Let Sibelius choose instruments: with this option switched on, Sibelius will attempt to w ork

out which instruments are used in the score; it does this by checking the names of the staves that are set in PhotoScore—if a staff’s name doesn’t match an instrument Sibelius knows, it opens the file with the default piano sound

 Use scanned page dimensions: this option tells Sibelius to format the score according to the

page size suggested by PhotoScore. By default, the page size of the selected manuscript paper used for importing will be used instead, but you can switch this on if you like.

 The Page size, House style and orientation (Portrait or Landscape) options determine the doc-

ument setup of the resulting score.

Once your music has been opened in Sibelius you can do anything you li ke to it, ju st as if you had inputted it yourself—but see

Multi-staff instruments below for some clarification.

Add as

Editing rhythmic mistakes

If you send a score from PhotoScore Lite to Sibelius which has bars that don’t “add up,” Sibelius will lengthen bars that are too short, and shorten bars that are too long.

To do this, Sibelius compares the length of the bars with the prevailing time signature. If a bar is too short, Sibelius simply inserts rests at the end. If a bar is too long, Sibelius shortens it by omitting one or more notes/rests at the end of the bar.

Although Sibelius adjusts the lengths of bars like this, you are strongly advised to correct faulty rhythms in PhotoScore Lite in the first place rather than trying to fix them in Sibelius afterwards, as it will save you extra work.

Format

Sibelius uses

Make Into System and Make Into Page to ensure that the format of the music is the

same as the original. However, if the notes seem uncomfortably close together or far apart in the end result, try changing the staff size in cut

Ctrl+D or D). Alternatively, if you don’t need the format of the music to match the origi-

nal, select the whole score (

Ctrl+A or A) and unlock the format (Ctrl+Shift+U or U).

Layout  Document Setup  Document Setup (short-

Multi-staff instruments

For instruments that use two staves by default, such as a piano, you may find that it isn’t possible to use cross-staff beaming in music you have scanned. This is because PhotoScore Lite treats all staves as separate instruments, which means that, by default, multi-staff instruments such as keyboards will be sent to Sibelius as two separately-named staves without a brace.

When you send a PhotoScore file to Sibelius, you can use the

Open PhotoScore File dialog to

tell Sibelius that, say, staves 1 and 2 are actually the right- and left-hand staves of a piano— either choose the instruments yourself, or click

Let Sibelius choose instruments.

For multi-staff instruments such as Flutes 1+2, if you want them to be written as two subbracketed staves with a single name, you could either import each staff as a flute and then change the name and add a brace in Sibelius, or import both staves as a piano, and then change the name and the sound (

 6.3 Mixer).

If your original contains instruments that have a different number of staves on different systems—e.g. strings that are sometimes divisi—see

ADVANCED FEATURES below.

Closing the output score

Once you have finished scanning a score and have sent it to Sibelius, and are satisfied with the result, you should close the score in PhotoScore Lite before you start scanning a new one. To do this, simply choose

File  Close Score; if the score has unsaved changes, you will be

prompted to save.

Deleting unwanted scans

PhotoScore Lite automatically saves each page you scan as a scanned image. This occupies a not insignificant amount of hard disk space, so you should regularly delete scans that have been read. You do not, however, have to delete the scans before scanning the next piece of music.

To delete unwanted scans:

 If the pages pane is not currently shown, choose View  Toggle Pages Pane (shortcut Ctrl+E or

E)

 Click on the name of the page you want to delete; you can select more than one page at the

same time by holding down the word

 PhotoScore will warn you that you are about to delete these pages: click Yes to confirm their

Remove appears to the right of its name: click Remove to delete the pages.

Shift and clicking elsewhere in the list. When a page is selected,

deletion.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Scanning takes a long time

If there are no signs of scanning happening—i.e. if after clicking on the

Scan or Preview button

the scanner remains silent with no lights moving or flashing—communication between the computer and the scanner has probably been interrupted.

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

Check that the scanner is switched on and that the cable between it and the computer is firmly connected at both ends. If this doesn’t help, try reinstalling your TWAIN scanner driver software.

Beware that some scanners need to be switched on before the computer is turned on, otherwise they are not detected.

Not all staves/systems are detected

If after scanning a page you find that not all staves are highlighted in blue, or the staves are not correctly joined into systems by a thick red vertical line, this may be because:

 The original has 13 or more staves on a page: only PhotoScore Ultimate can scan scores

with more than 12 staves.

 The original was not flat on the scanner glass: always close the lid when scanning, unless

scanning a thick book. It may also help if you gently press down on the scanner lid during scanning.

 The page was scanned at too low a resolution (i.e. the staves are smaller than you think):

check the staff size, alter the scanner setting accordingly, and re-scan.

 You tried scanning a double-page spread: PhotoSco re Lite cannot read both pages of a d ou-

ble-page spread (e.g. from a miniature score) at once. Re-scan each of the pages separately. Ensure that the music on the facing page is completely off the glass, or not scanned—if any of it impinges on the scan, PhotoScore Lite will not read the music correctly.

 The staves are not clear enough in the original to be detected: in this case, you can tell Pho-

toScore Lite where any missing staves are located on the page—see

TURES

below.

ADVANCED FEA-

Reading takes a long time

 If the page was scanned without being flat on the glass or with the lid open: you will get a

black border around the page that may spread across and obliterate some of the music. This can make PhotoScore Lite take an extremely long time to read the page. If this happens, interrupt reading (see below), then re-scan the page.

 If not all staves were detected after scanning (i.e. some were not highlighted in blue): this

can slow reading down, see

Not all staves/systems are detected above.

Music reads inaccurately

If you find music seems to be reading very inaccurately, this may be because:

 the original is of poor quality, e.g. a photocopy or an old edition;  the original is handwritten (or uses a music font that looks handwritten): PhotoScore Lite i s

not designed to read handwritten music;

 the music uses more than two voices;  the music was scanned in black & white and was not straight enough: it is recommended that

you scan in shades of gray;

 the music was not straight enough when scanned and Make scans level was not selected in

the preferences (see

 the music symbol designs used in the original are of a non-standard shape or size.

ADVANCED FEATURES below);

ADVANCED FEATURES

PhotoScore Lite has many features and options for more advanced use. You are strongly recommended to familiarize yourself wit h this whole secti on before embark-

ing on any intensive scanning, such as orchestral/band scores or scores with many pages.

Choosing between scanners

In the unlikely event that you have more than one scanner connected to your computer, you can choose between multiple scanner drivers by choosing

File  Select Scanner.

Adjusting detected staves/systems

When you scan a page, PhotoScore Lite highlights staves it detects in blue, and joins them into systems with vertical red lines.

However, if the original is of poor quality, PhotoScore Lite may not detect some of the staves/ systems, and you should tell PhotoScore Lite where they are.

The easiest method is to select the nearest blue staff (by clicking on it) and copy it by

Alt+clicking or -clicking over the center line of the missing staff (the horizontal position is

not important). You can create a blue staff from scratch by clicking and dragging it out with the left mouse

button. After creating the staff, ensure that it is joined to any other staves in the same system (see

below). PhotoScore Lite will automatically “clip” the staff in place, by adjusting the position and size

of it, if it finds an appropriate staff underneath. If it fails to position/size the staff correctly, scale the image to full size (by clicking on the button at the top marked

100) and adjust it using

the blue “handles.”

 You can drag any blue staff up and down with the l eft mouse button. This also causes the

staff to automatically clip in place.

 You can drag the ends of blue staves around, and can even put blue staves at an angle.  You can alter the size of any blue staff—pull the “handles” in the middle of the staff up or

down. PhotoScore Lite can read pages that have a mixture of staff-sizes, and each blue staff can have a different size. The top circular handle allows you to change the curvature of the staff. This is useful when scanning pages from thick books, where it is not possible to prevent the page from being curved at the edges.

 If any scanned staff is left with no blue staff on top of it, the scanned staff and any music on

it will be ignored when the page is read. This can slow reading down, but is otherwise harmless.

 T o join two adjacent staves together into the same system, click one staff so it goes red, then

Alt+click or -click the other staff. They will be joined near the left-hand end by a thick

vertical (or near-vertical) red line.

 To separate two joined staves into two separate systems, do exactly the same as for joining

two staves.

 PhotoScore Lite automatically guesses whether staves should be joined together or not when

you create new ones, or move existing ones.

 If you’ve messed up the blue staves and want to start again, Ctrl+double-click or -double-

click the scan, and PhotoScore Lite will reset the blue staves to their original positions.

 When you have finished editing the staves/systems, check carefully that the staves are all

joined into systems correctly, as you cannot alter this once the page has been read.

Scan window options

If you have chosen to use PhotoScore’s scanning interface in various further options and buttons available on the scan window:

File  Scanner Setup, there are

1.8 PhotoScore Lite

 The Read this page button reads just this scan. Clicking the arrowed part of the button opens

a menu that lets you choose where in the output score to insert this page once it has been read.

 Scale produces a dialog that lets you zoom in and out of the scan. The button to the right of

Scale zooms the image to fit the main window; 50 zooms to 50%; 100 zooms to 100%.

 Upside down quickly rotates the image by 180 degrees, in case it was scanned the wrong way

up.

 Re-scan re-scans the page.  On side quickly rotates the image by 90 degrees, in case it was scanned on its side.

Omitted staves

In scores for many instruments, particularly orchestral scores, unused staves are often omitted. If you replace the default instrument names (e.g. “Staff 1”) at the start with proper names, then

on subsequent systems PhotoScore Lite will allocate instruments to staves in order from the top down. Hence, if the original page omits an instrument from one system, then in the output window some of the staves will have the wrong nam es. To correct a name in this situation, Right-click or

Control-click over the existing instrument name against the staff in question,

and choose the correct instrument from the list of current instruments. On any system that has staves omitted you will probably have to correct several instrument

names like this. Do it with care, otherwise confusion will arise.

Multi-staff instruments

For multi-staff instruments such as keyboards and divided wind and strings, PhotoScore Lite treats each staff as a separately-named instrument.

If the number of staves for a multi-staff instrument varies at all in the original, e.g. where strings are divisi, then to avoid any confusion between the staves it’s best to give them slightly different names, e.g.

Viol a a and Viola b. You can change the names back once the score has

been sent to Sibelius. Wherever any of the instrument’s staves are omitted, follow

Omitted staves (above).

N.B. If the number of staves for the instrument increases (say from 1 to 2) during the score, and the second staff has not occurred before, treat it by following

duced after the start

(below).

Instruments/staves intro-

Instruments/staves introduced after the start

Some scores include instruments or staves that are not shown on the first system. When this happens, on the system where the instrument/staff is first introduced you should do

the following:

 First, correct the names of each of the other staves:

Right-click (Windows) or

Control-click (Mac) each name, and choose the correct name from

the list of current instruments

 Then tell PhotoScore Lite the name of the newly-introduced instrument/staff  Point over whatever name it has fill ed in (which may say e.g. Staff 5, or the name of an

omitted instrument). Right-click (Windows) or

Control-click (Mac), click New, and click a

name from the list of instruments displayed. If you want a non-standard name, y ou can edit the name at the bottom.

You must do this with care—or else a lot of confusion can arise.

Small staves

In the output window, small staves are displayed at full size to make them legible, but they are indicated by the following symbol at the end of the staff:

Other preferences

The

File  Preferences dialog contains various other options, as follows.

On the

Scanning page:

 Automatic scanning and Scan more quickly are only available in PhotoScore Ultimate  PhotoScore: with this selected, PhotoScore uses its own simple scanning interface  TWAIN (scanner def ault): when chosen, the standard TWAIN interface (that works with

all scanning programs) will be used when you choose

 Select TWAIN scanner

allows you to choose which scanning device PhotoScore should

File  Scan pages

use

 Make scans level: with this switched on, PhotoScore Lite will work out how rotated a scan

is, and then rotate it so that the staves are level. It is recommended that this is left selected.

 Read pages after scanning/opening is only available in PhotoScore Ultimate.

 On the Reading page, most options are disabled (since they are only available in PhotoScore

Ultimate). The only option you can switch on or off is

Ties, Slurs and Hairpins, which is

partly enabled, because PhotoScore Lite can only read ties.

 On the Editing page:

 Automatic page margins: creates suitable page margins on each page  Attach scanned staff panel to current staff: on the output window, this puts the original scan

just above the highlighted staff instead of at the top of the window. This means you have to move your eyes less when comparing the output with the original, but the effect can be confusing.

 Drag paper by: allows you to choose whether you drag the paper either by clicking and

dragging, or of Sibelius’s

 On the Advanced page:

 MIDI playback device allows you to choose which of your computer ’s playback devices

Holding Shift and dragging (in a similar way to the options in the Mouse page

File  Preferences dialog).

PhotoScore should use for playback

 System playback properties launches your operating system’s sound and audio device

properties dialog, allowing you to choose your playback and recording devices for audio, and your preferred playback device for MIDI

 Display splash screen at start-up: allows you to switch off the PhotoScore Lite splash

screen when you run the program

 Auto-save to backup file every n minutes: automatically backs up your score regularly at

the time interval specified.

If you change any of these options, they will remain as the new default settings each time use you PhotoScore until you change them again.

1.9 AudioScore Lite

AudioScore Lite from Neuratron is a transcription program designed to work with Sibelius. You can use it to input music into Sibelius by playing a monophonic acoustic instrument (such as a flute, clarinet, or trumpet) or singing into a microphone—or you can import an exi sting audio file in notes, and allows you to edit them before sending them to Sibelius for further editing. AudioScore Lite lets you transcribe up to 4 instruments simultaneously for up to 6 minutes. Sixteenth notes are the shortest note duration it can transcribe.

On-screen help

In addition to this topic, AudioScore Lite has its own on-screen help: to access it, choose

Help  Neuratron AudioScore Help from AudioScore Lite’s menus.

AudioScore First

AudioScore First is an introductory version of AudioScore that comes with Sibelius | First. AudioScore First can transcribe up to 2 instruments simultaneously for u p to 1 mi nute. Eighth notes are the shortest note duration it can transcribe.

AudioScore Ultimate

An advanced version of AudioScore, called AudioScore U ltimate, is available to buy separately. AudioScore Ultimate can transcribe up to 32 instruments simultaneously for up to 6 minutes. Sixteenth notes are the shortest note duration it can transcribe. It can also import MP3 audio files and supports more advanced note editing.

For details of AudioScore Ultimate, see

.wav or .aiff format. AudioScore listens to your performance, transcribes the

http://www.sibelius.com/audioscore

Suitable microphones

AudioScore Lite will work with any microphone connected to y our computer via the USB, microphone input or line input ports. However, cheap microphones—which typically produce large amounts of background noise—may not produce the best results. One indication that your microphone may not be of sufficient quality is that AudioScore Lite’s level meter when recording shows a high level even when you are not playing or singing.

AudioScore Lite will attempt to recognize the performance regardless, but the result will be less accurate, particularly at extremes of pitch. Playing or singing more loudly or closer to the microphone (taking care not to touch or blow on it) may help, but if you want to use AudioScore most successfully, a good quality microphone will improve the quality of results you can obtain.

Suitable performances

For best results, try to perform as clearly and as cleanly as possible, at a steady tempo; for example, if you are playing violin, move your fingers between strings as silently as possible, and avoid tapping on the instrument’s body with the bow or your fingers. Try to perform in quiet surroundings with as little background noise as possible (including electrical interference, which you will often hear as a low “hum” if your cabling is poorly shielded).

Copyright music

You should be aware that if you record someone else’s music without permission you are likely to infringe copyright. Copyright infringement is forbidden by the Sibelius license agreement.

Starting AudioScore Lite

Run AudioScore Lite via its icon in the Start menu (Windows) or in the

Applications folder

(Mac). In AudioScore Lite, choose

File  Select Devices to check that appropriate audio input and

MIDI output devices are selected. You must make sure that you choose the input device that corresponds to the input to which your micropho ne is connected; unless your microphone is connected via USB, it may well be called something cryptic.

The three stages

There are three stages when using AudioScore Lite:

 Creating tracks. AudioScore records your performance, works out what notes and pitches

are played, and determines the rhythm of your performance. AudioScore Lite allows you to create up to four tracks (i.e. four instruments, or four staves in Sibelius) in a single project.

 Editing tracks. Edit the performance to create a basic score containing the intended rhythm

and pitches.

 Sending to Sibelius. This is done simply by clicking a button. After a moment, the music

appears in Sibelius, as if you’d inputted it using any other input method.

You can then play the music back, re-arrange it, transpose it, create parts, or print it out.

1. CREATING TRACKS

The first stage is to create one or more tracks, either by recording using a microphone, or opening an existing audio file (in

.wav or .aiff format, or from an audio CD).

Recording a new track using a microphone

Click

Record new track on the toolbar (shortcut * on the numeric keypad). Before recording

begins, this dialog appears:

 If you want to record to a metronome click, you can choose between one of the predefined

tempos (e.g.

Adagio (slow) or Allegro (fast)), or enter a tempo of your own choosing in

quarter note (crotchet) beats per minute.

 If you want to record in your own time without a metronome click, choose Calculated from

performance

. AudioScore will do its best to work out th e note durations automatically, and

it’s easy to adjust them if it makes any errors.

 Whether or not you are recording to a click, you should set the time signature before you

begin: only simple time signatures are available in AudioScore Lite, so if you need compound time signatures (like 6/8) you will need to up grad e to AudioScore Ultimate.

1.9 AudioScore Lite

Now you can simply click out what instrument to use, or click

Record

Open

Instrument

, in which case AudioScore will automatically work

to choose the instrument you are going to record

with:

 First, choose whether to name your instruments in English, German or Italian.  Next, choose the appropriate instrument family from the Section list.  Finally, choose the instrument itself from the Available list, and set a custom Name if you

want.

You can switch on

Set as the default instrument for all tracks in this composition if you don’t want

to have to choose the instrument again for any other tracks you subsequen tly add. Click

Record, and if you chose to play to a metronome click, AudioScore will play one bar of

clicks; otherwise, it will start recording right away. Sing or play into your microphone, and as you do so, you will see the music appear in the top half of the window, known as the perfor- mance area:

The performance area shows AudioScore’s interpretation of the current track in terms of pitch and time, and is also where you edit the pitch, position and duration of notes.

Below the performance area is the score preview area, which shows A udioScore’s interpreta- tion of all tracks in notation: the current track shown in the performance area is highlighted in light blue in the score preview area.

You can resize the performance area and the score preview area by clicking and dragging the divider between the two areas.

You will also see a small input level window, which shows the current input level from your microphone. You can resize this window by clicking and dragging its edges.

When you have finished recording, click only), or hit

* on the numeric keypad. Depending on the speed of your computer, AudioScore

Stop recording on the toolbar, hit Space (Windows

may need to finish recognizing the notes in your performance before you can proceed: the black information bar at the bottom of AudioScore’s window shows you the progress.

Recording another track

To record another track, simply click

Record new track again. The new track is inserted directly

below the track selected in the score preview area. To select a track, click the instrument name in the score preview area; you can select multiple adjacent tracks by non-adjacent tracks by

Ctrl+clicking or -clicking.

Shift-clicking, or multiple

As you record your new track, AudioScore will play back all of the existing tracks (if no track was selected before you started recording), or just the tracks you selected before starting recording. AudioScore will use the same tempo and metrono me settings as used for the p revious track. If your first track was recorded freely without a metronome, AudioScore will use the tempo it worked out from your first performance as the basis of the metronome click for subsequent tracks.

Inserting music into an existing track

To insert or append more music to an existing track, select the track in the score preview area by clicking its name, then click in the performance area at the point at which you want to insert

more music. Choose the top left-hand corner of the performance area (not the main

File  Record to Cu rrent Track, or click the small red record button at

Record new track button on the

toolbar).

Creating a new track from an audio file

To create a new track from an audio file, choose

File  Open, and choose the .wav or .aiff file

you want to open, or insert an audio CD into your computer ’s DVD-ROM drive and choose that. Just as when you record a track using a microphone, AudioScore prompts you to choose the tempo, time signature and instrument, so see

Recording a new track using a microphone

above for help with those settings. Unless you already know the tempo of your audio file, you should choose

Calculated from performance instead of one of the preset tempos.

2. EDITING TRACKS

Having recorded one or more tracks, the next stage is to edit them.

Playing back the performance

To play back your performance, click in the performance area to set the starting position, then choose

Play  Play/Pause Original (shortcut O) or click the small green playback button at

the top left-hand corner of the performance area. The notes in the performance area are highlighted during playback.

Playing back an individual note

To play back an individual note, simply click it in the performance area. If the note is part of a chord, double-click the note to play the whole chord.

1.9 AudioScore Lite

Type of object Time position Pitch Frequency Tuning meter Tempo

Deleting tracks

To delete the current track (i.e. the one displayed in the performance area, and highlighted in the score preview area), choose

To delete multiple tracks, select them in the score preview area with

-click, then choose Edit  Delete Selected Tracks.

Edit  Delete Current Track.

Shift-click or Ctrl+click

Beware: deleting a track cannot be undone, so be careful!

Editing notes

You can only edit notes in the performance area, not in th e score preview area. As you move the mouse pointer over the performance area, the mouse pointer changes to help you understand what kinds of edits you can make. Notice also that the black information bar at the bottom of the screen updates to show you useful information about whatever your mouse poi nter is hovering over:

To select a single note, simply click on it. To select a range of notes, click and drag on a blank bit of the performance area. You can also select a continu ous range of notes using or add individual notes to the selection using

Ctrl+click or -click.

Shift-click,

The edits you can make to notes are as follows:

 Drag a note up and down to change its pitch. Hold Alt or  to change the pitch by half-steps

(semitones).

 Drag the left- or right-hand end of a note to change its duration. Rests are automatically cre-

ated in the score preview area if notes don’t adjoin. Where notes do adjoin, dragging the boundary between the notes lengthens one and shortens the other.

 Drag a note left or right to change its position in the bar.  Delete a note by selecting it and hitting Delete.  To split a note (e.g. because AudioScore did not correctly detect two or more notes of the

same pitch one after another), select it, then choose can also right-click (Windows) or

 To join two or more notes into a single not e (which will end up with the pitch of the first

Control-click (Mac) a note to see these options.

note), select the notes you want to join, and choose also available when you right-click (Windows) or

Notes  Split Into Two/Three/Four; you

Notes  Join Notes into One. This option is

Control-click (Mac) a note.

Moving barlines

The vertical lines in the performance area denote beats and barlines: beats are shown in light gray, and barlines are shown in black. You can move barlines simply by clicking and dragging them. As you do so, the score preview area updates to show the resulting notation.

If your original performance was recorded to a click, you can adju st the barlines in any order, but if your original performance was recorded freely, you should adjust the barlines from left to right.

Inserting a bar

If you need to insert a bar, click in the performance area at the point at which you want to insert a bar, then choose one of the options from the

 In Current Track adds a single empty bar to the current track  In All Tracks adds a single empty bar to all tracks

Notes  Insert Bar submenu:

 Other allows you to add more than one bar to the current track, the selected track(s), or all

tracks. In the dialog that appears, you can also switch on

Fill with notes to fill the newly-

created bars with notes.

Changing the key signature

AudioScore attempts to set the appropriate key signature automatically, but in the event that you want to change it, choose ture from the

Major Key or Minor Key submenu.

Composition  Key Signature, then choose the desired key signa-

Changing the time signature

If you want to change the time signature after making your initial choice when recording your first track, choose

OK.

Composition  Time Signature, choose the desired time signature, and click

Changing the instrument

If you want to change the instrument used by the current track, choose

Instrument for Current Track

, choose the desired instrument, and click OK.

Composition  Set

Staff display and piano roll display

AudioScore has two modes for displaying the notes in the performance area. By default, it displays the pitches on a regular 5-line staff. When you drag a note up and down in diatonic mode, it snaps to the next diatonic pitch, unless y ou hold down

Alt or  to move the note by

half-steps (semitones). You can switch to a piano roll display by clicking th e button at the top of the performance

area. A piano keyboard appears at the left-hand side of the performance area, and the selected note is highlighted on the keyboard. Switch back to staff display by clicking .

3. SENDING TO SIBELIUS

Once you are satisfied with the appearance of the tracks in the score preview area, it’s time to send your music to Sibelius.

Create Score

You can choose

File  Create Score to format the music from the score preview area as a page of

music, which you can edit in a similar way to editing scanned music in PhotoScore (

 1.8 PhotoScore Lite). However, since AudioScore Lite can’t print, and since you have

Sibelius, you can normally proceed directly to sending a score to Sibelius.

Send to Sibelius

To send your score to Sibelius, simply click the choose

File  Send to  Sibelius (shortcut Ctrl+D or D). If Sibelius isn’t already running, it will

Send to Sibelius button on the toolbar, or

launch, and a dialog will appear asking you to choose instruments and set th e page size. This dialog is the same as the one that appears when you send music from PhotoScore to Sibelius— for more details, see

4. SENDING TO SIBELIUS on page 65.

Saving an .opt file

If, for some reason, clicking the

to save your current AudioScore project as a PhotoScore (.opt) file. Once you have saved

your AudioScore project as an

File  Open.

Send to Sibelius button doesn’t work, you can use File  Save

.opt file, you can open the .opt file directly in Sibelius using

1.10 Splitting and joining scores (Sibelius | Ultimate Only)

1.10 Splitting and joining scores

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only)

You can write several movements, songs or pieces inside the same score file, or write them in separate scores and combine them later. You can also split a score containing several pieces into individual scores.

Several movements, songs or pieces

It’s preferable to put several sections (e.g. movements, songs or pieces of music) into one score instead of having a separate score for each. Moreover, if you want any new sections to be on the same page as each other, in the score or in parts, you must input them in the same file.

If you have different sections in two or more files that you want to join together, see

ing scores

To write, say, a couple of two-system exercises on the same page:

 Input the first exercise as normal  Select the barline at the end of the first exercise and hit Return (on the main keyboard) to cre-

ate a system break

 If you also need full instrument names and an indented staff, select the bar at the end of the

previous system, open the

 Create a double or final barline at the end of the first exercise if desired (Notations 

Common 

 If the key signature is different at the beginning of the second exercise, create a new one via

More Options at the bottom of Notations  Common  Key Signature, making sure to switch on Hide; this will hide the key change at the end of the previous system

 Similarly, if you require a different time signature in the next exercise, create it via More

Options Allow cautionary; this prevents a cautionary time signature from being drawn at the end of

the previous system

 Reset the bar number at the beginning of the second exercise if desired (Text  Numbering 

Bar Number Change

below.

Bars panel of the Inspector, and switch on Section end

Barline  Final or Double)

at the bottom of Notations  Common  Time Signature, making sure to switch off

Append-

Inputting a score in several files

If you want to input a single score in several separate files—perhaps if several peop le are copying or orchestrating it simultaneously—you will probably want to adjust the first bar number, first page number and first rehearsal mark of each file so that the bars, pages and rehearsal marks follow on from the previous one.

Beware that if you plan to use parts, each section into which the full score was divided will start on a new page in every part, which may pro duce inconvenient page-turns. So once the score is finished, it’s best to join the files together using the

Appending scores

You may want to join two scores together if, for example, you are creating songbook s out of separate song files. Sibelius has a feature to append a score to the end of an existi ng score, automatically checking that the two scores have matching staves, and ensuring that the appended score starts on a new page.

File  Append feature—see below.

To use this feature, open the first score and choose

File  Append. A dialog appears from which

you can choose another score to append (the file you choose to append will not itself be changed).

If it doesn’t have the same number of staves, Sibelius will tell you (it won’t append a score unless the staves match exactly). If the number of staves is the same but some of the instrument names are different, Sibelius will warn you but let you continue if you like.

Text styles, symbols, noteheads etc. are merged between the two files; if two text styles have the same name but are set up differently , the one in the first score is used. Sibelius does several things to make sure the join between the scores is neat: changes of time signature, key signature, clef and instrument are created at the join if necessary. The final barline in the first score is set to be a page break and a “section end,” so that the appended score starts on a new page with (typically) full instrument names. Thus the appended score’s layout will normally be just the same as it was.

You may want to hide the cautionary clef and time signature changes, as well as key changes, where the two scores join, particularly if it’s at a break between two move ments or pieces. The quickest way to do this is using

Home  Plug-ins  Other  Tidy Appended Score, which

automates all of those steps for you:

Each of the options has a handy should switch it on or leave it switched off. Make your choices, click

Info button that allows you to find out more about when you

OK, and Sibelius pro-

cesses the join between the two movements or pieces.

Splitting scores

If you have a single Sibelius score that contains several pieces, and you need to split it into separate files, the simplest way to do this is to use

Score

. First, make a passage selection that contains the bars you want to split into a new score,

Home  Plug-ins  Other  Export Selection as

then run the plug-in: you will be prompted for the new score’s filename and the folder where it should be saved. Click

OK, and a few moments later your new, cut-down score is opened.

1.11 Printing

For details of standard paper sizes and advice on what page and staff sizes to use for particular types of music,

Setting the default paper size

Each Sibelius score you create stores its own print settings, including the default paper size on which it should be printed, but it can be helpful to check that your printer driver is set to use the correct default paper size.

On Mac, each program on your computer maintains its own default paper size, so you simply need to ensure that the correct size is set in the the

File  Print pane in Sibelius.

On Windows, you can also change the paper size via the documents printed from Sibelius. The next time you start up Sibelius, its default paper size is reset to your printer driver’s default again. This means that you should ensure your printer’s default settings are correct. To do this:

 From the Start menu, click Devices and Printers



Right-click your printer’s icon and choose Printing preferences Exactly what you will see next varies by printer manufacturer and model, but somewhere



within the printer’s settings you should be able to the correct default paper size, then click

OK twice to confirm the changes.

 7.1 Document Setup.

Page Setup dialog, which you can access from

Page Setup dialog, but this only affects

Quick printing

T o print your score, click the

P). At the top of the pane is a large Print button: if you just want to print one or more copies

of your score without setting any advanced features, you can simply set the number of copies and click

Print to send your score to the default printer.

File tab, then choose the Print pane, or type the shortcut Ctrl+P or

Printing options

For more sophisticated printing needs, such as booklets, take a look at the other options in the

Print pane.

On the right is a large print preview, which shows exactly what will be sent to your printer. If, for example, you set your B5 score to print on A4 paper with borders and crop marks showing, the print preview will show you exactly how this will look. Likewise, if you set your portrait score to print 2-up on landscape paper, the print preview will show you exactly what will come out of your printer. Below the print preview are controls to flip between the pages that will be printed, and to zoom the print preview in or out, so you can take a closer look if you like.

Above the large

parts

. If the tab you were looking at when you decided to print is a part, then Print parts will be

Print button you will normally see two check boxes: Print full score, and Print

switched on, but otherwise by default it’s switched off. When you switch it on, a table appears in which you can choose which parts to print, and how many copies—see

parts

on page 84.

Below the large

 Printer lists the printers available to your computer. By default, the printer you have chosen

Print button are the options for setting up the print job, as follows:

Printing dynamic

as your system-wide default will be chosen, unless you have previously chosen another printer during this session.

 Printer Properties either launches the printer preferences dialog for the chosen printer

(Windows) or takes you to the

Print & Fax pane of System Preferences (Mac). On Windows,

changes made here only take effect until you quit Sibelius: to make permanent changes to your printer’s default settings, use

Printer Preferences in Printers and Devices in Control

Panel.

 Duplex Options allows you to tell Sibelius how the chosen printer handles duplex printing —

see

Double-sided printing below.

 Print all pages / Print current page / Print Range chooses between printing all, one or some of

the pages of the score—see

 Print one sided / Manually print both sides / Automatically print both sides chooses between

Print range below.

printing on only one side of each sheet of paper, asking you to flip the paper over half way through the print job in order to print o n the other side as well, or printing on both sides of each sheet of paper automatically (this latter option only being available if your printer has an automatic duplexing feature)—see

 Uncollated / Collated chooses between printing all copies of required pages together, or

printing all of the pages required for each copy together—see

 Portrait Orientation / Landscape Orientation changes the orientation of how the page will be

Double-sided printing below.

Collate below.

printed, but it doesn’t change the orientation of the score itself (to do that, use

Document Setup 

Orientation). Be careful if you change this: unless you switch on Fit to paper

or otherwise adjust Scale (see below) it will result in some part of the page not being printed.

 Normal / Spreads / Booklet / 2 Pages per Sheet chooses between printing a single page of the

score onto a single side of a sheet of paper, and three other imposition options that each put two pages onto a single side of a sheet of paper—see below.

 Fit to paper automatically shrinks the pages of your score if necessary to fit onto the currently

chosen paper size—see

 Scale allows you to set any scale factor for printing. Your music is normally printed at 100%

size. To reduce the music to fit onto smaller paper, simply switch on

Fit to paper below.

Fit to paper instead of

working out the scale factor yourself.

Layout 

1.11 Printing

 Date and time footer tells Sibelius to print date and time footers on each page of your score.

This is useful for keeping track of different versions of a score. For details on setting up and customizing this footer,

 Border prints a thin border around the page. When printing on outsize paper, this makes the

 1.26 Preferences.

pages easier to visualize, and easier to guillotine, than just using crop marks. It’s also very useful to proof-read scores scaled to (say) 65%, with

Border and Spreads (see below)

switched on.

 Crop marks are little cross-hairs used in professional publishing to point to the corners of the

page. Crop marks are required because books are printed on oversized paper that is subsequently trimmed to the required size. It’s only sensible to use crop marks if you’re printing on paper that is larger than your score’s pages.

 View options prints options switched on in the View tab, such as highlights, hidden objects

and note colors—

 Print in color (Windows only) tells Sibelius to print any objects that you have colored in your

 11.4 Invisibles etc. for more details of these options.

score in color (or gray if you have a black-and-white printer). Colors in any graphics you may have in your score will also be printed. When switched off, colored objects print in black.

On Mac, an extra button,

Use OS Dialog, appears at the bottom left-hand corner of the Print

pane, which allows you to use the standard Mac OS X-provided Print dialog rather than the special controls provided by Sibelius. Note that if you choose to use the M ac OS X dialog, most of the options described in these pages will not be available.

Print range

If you don’t want to print the whole score, you can type a list of pages to print (e.g. and/or a range of pages (e.g.

5-9), which can be backwards to print in reverse order (e.g. 9-5).

The page numbers you specify here are not necessarily the page numbers displayed in the score if your score uses page number changes. Instead they refer to the physical pages in your score: if you want to print the second, third, and fourth pages of the score, even though they may be numbered ii, iii and iv, you type

2-4 in the Pages control.  5.14 Page numbers.

Collate

When you print multiple copies of a score, by default, multiple copies are print ed

Uncollated,

so if you choose two copies the pages will come out in the order 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, etc. However, if you choose

Collated, each copy of the score is collated properly, so the pages

come out in the order 1, 2, 3, 4... 1 , 2 , 3, 4.... This saves you having to sort the pages into order

yourself, but on laser printers printing may take a little longer.

Fit to paper

This scales the score down in size, if necessary, so that the music fits within the print margins of the paper, to avoid the edges of the music being clipped. This is particularly useful for printing Letter sized scores on A4 paper (and vice versa), and for reducing Tabloid/A3 scores onto Letter/ A4 paper.

Fit to paper does not however expand the music to fill the paper if it is larger than the

page size. Beware that US paper sizes such as Letter and Tabloid are not quite the same shape as each

other, so the page margins may turn out differently than you expect. No such problem arises with European paper sizes.

This option automatically adjusts the can’t change the

Scale setting yourself.

Scale setting, so if you have Fit to paper switched on, you

1, 3, 8),

Double-sided printing

If your printer does not support automatic duplex printing, before you embark on a major print job, you should make sure to tell Sibelius how your printer feeds paper. The variables are whether printed sheets come out of your printer face up or face down, and whether the paper needs to be flipped over before it is fed back into t he printer. These two factors together determine whether or not the pages to be printed on the other side of each sheet should be printed in reverse order.

Before you print, choose

In the

Manual Duplexing Options group, choose the radio button that matches the behavior of

File  Print and click Duplex Options, to see this dialog:

your printer. This determines whether or not the pages to be printed on the reverse of each sheet of paper should be printed in reverse order. Sibelius remembers this setting for each printer on your system, so you will only need to set it once per printer.

Once you have this set correctly:

 Select Print all pages and Manually print both sides, then click Print. Sibelius will print the

odd-numbered (i.e. right-hand) pages, then stop and show a message box tellin g you to turn the paper over and feed it back into the printer: don’t click because Sibelius will start printing the even-numbered pages as soon as you click

 Feed the pages back into the printer, flipping them if necessary.  Now click OK. Sibelius now prints the even-numbered (i.e. left-hand) pages on the back of

OK until you have done this,

OK.

the odd-numbered ones.

If your printer supports automatic duplex printing, then you don’t need to worry about manually re-feeding any pages, but Sibelius does need to know how your printer flips the paper, and this can vary based on whether you are printing portrait or landscape. If you imagine a sheet of paper in portrait orientation, you can flip it on it s long edge, turnin g it over like the page of a portrait book, or you can flip it on its short edge, turning it over like the page of a notebook with spiral binding at the top (sometimes known as tumbling).

The best way to establish how your printer behaves is to try it out. With a score open whose pages are in landscape orientation:

 Choose File  Print, select Print all pages, Normal, and Automatically print both sides, then

click

Print.

 Check the music is the same way up on both sides of the paper. If it is not, go back to Duplex

Options

and choose the Flip on short edge radio button under Portrait orientation, then try

again.

 Now choose File  Print, select Booklet, and Automatically print both sides, then click Print.

Difference between spreads and 2-up on a six page document:

1.11 Printing

 Check the music is the same way up on both sides of the paper. If it is not, go back to Duplex

Options

and choose the Flip on short edge radio button under Landscape orientation, then try

again.

The settings in

Duplex Options are remembered by Sibelius on a per-printer basis, so once you

have established how the automatic duplexing works for your printer for both portrait and landscape scores, you won’t need to change this again in future.

Spreads

This prints two consecutive pages side by side on each sheet of paper, and odd-numbered pages are always printed at the right-hand side o f the paper. This format is suitable for proofing.

With

Spreads selected, either:

 make sure your paper is at least twice the size of your pages in

Sibelius (e.g. Tabloid/A3 paper for Letter/A4 pages); or

 use the same page size as paper size but reduce the Scale accord-

ingly, e.g. print Letter/A4 pages at 68% on Letter/A4 paper.

Then print as normal, using any other options such as

Border.

Spreads 2-Up

2 3

4 5

2-Up

Similar to printed on the left.

Booklet

A “booklet” is a small book consisting of double-sided pages stapled in the middle. Booklets are printed with two pages side-by-side on sheets of paper that are twice the size of the pages.

The pages have to be numbered strangely when printed so that it all works when the booklet is assembled. For instance, the outermost sheet of a 16-p age booklet would h ave pages 16 an d 1 on the front (in that order) and pages 2 and 15 on the back. Fortunately this complicated layout procedure, known technically as “imposition,” i s do ne automatically for you by Sibelius.

To print as a booklet, choose disabled, to ensure you get the right result: booklets are always printed in landscap e orientation, always collated, and always using both sides of each sheet of paper (you can choose between manual and automatic duplexing if your printer supports au tomatic dup lexing). Click

Page Setup to check that the right paper size is chosen: you could print a booklet from a score

that uses A4 pages either on A3 paper, so that each A4 page is printed full-size, or on, say, A4 paper, so that each A4 page is printed at 70% of its full size.

Notice that the print preview shows what will actually be printed on each side of each sheet of paper. The first page shown in the preview is one side of the first sheet of paper, the second page is the other side of that sheet, the third page is the first side of the second sheet, and so on. This is not, however, the order in which the pages will come out of your printer: Sibelius will print one side of each sheet first, then prompt you to turn over the printed stack and feed it back into the printer to print the other side.

You may notice that the first page shown in the print preview is compl etely blank. This might happen if your score has, say, six pages, and the first page is numbered as page 2: this requires an 8-page booklet, with pages 8 and 1 (the outside of the booklet) left blank. If you find that Sibelius prints a blank sheet at the start of a booklet printing job, don’t discard that blank sheet: feed it back into the printer to be sure of getting the correct result.

Spreads, except that the first page you specify is always

Booklet in File  Print. Many of the other options are then set and

3 4

5 6

Finally, choose how many copies of the booklet you want to print using the to the large

Print button, then click Print. Sibelius will print the outward pages of all of the cop-

Copies control next

ies of the booklet, then show a message box prompting you to turn the paper over and feed it back into the printer. Once you have done this, click

OK and Sibelius will print the inward

pages. For example, the printing order of an 8-page booklet is like this:

 Outward pages: 1 & 8 (together, page 1 on the right), 3 & 6  Inward pages: 2 & 7, 4 & 5.

Note also that two adjacent page numbers on a sheet always add up to the total number of pages (rounded up to a multiple of four), plus 1; in the above case, 9.

When the job has finished, simply fold each booklet in half, and staple it.

Printing dynamic parts

To print dynamic parts, either choose

Print All Parts

choose

, which selects all parts for printing,

File  Print when viewing a part, which selects

just the current part for printing, or switch on the

parts

checkbox above the large Print button. In any of

these cases, you see the regular

File  Print page, with

Parts  Print 

an extra table at the top of the page, above the large

Print button (see right).

The table lists the parts in the score, the number of copies to be printed (as specified in

Copies

, though you can also adjust the numbers here

Parts  Print 

if you like), and the saved paper size and orientation (as specified in to the controls in

Page Setup). Any changes you make

File  Print or the Page Setup dialog will be applied to all of the parts selected

in the table at the top of the page. When you click

printing more than one part, you will not be able to adjust the page range in the

Print, Sibelius will print all of the selected parts, one after the other. If you are

Print page, and

if you adjust the number of copies to be printed, the number specified here will override the individual settings of the parts to be printed.

1.11 Printing

Printing multiple scores at once

You can print multiple files at once (e.g. a whole folder) using

Processing 

Print Multiple Copies plug-in. You are first asked to choose a folder. Make your

Home  Plug-ins  Batch

selection, and a dialog appears:

 Choose the folder from the Folders containing scores list at the left  Select from the Scores in selected folder list, set the Copies drop-down to the number of cop-

ies of this file you want to print, and click the chosen folder to the

 Build up the list in the Print queue at the right by adding more files, and when you’re ready to

print, click

Print.

Print queue list, with the chosen number of copies.

Add File. Click Add All to add all of the scores in

The plug-in will print all the scores in the queue the specified number of times with the default options (it’s not possible to set options such as booklet printing etc. from the plug-in).

The

Read Copies button opens each file in the chosen folder and looks for the text ~copies=n

attached to any of the first five bars in the first five staves, where n is the number of copies that should be printed, and adds them to the set. If a file contains more than one text object of the form

Print queue list with the appropriate number of copies

~copies=n it is assumed to be a score

before part extraction and so is not added.

Choosing good paper

Investing in very good paper can make your printouts look twice as good. Good paper is bright white, is very opaque so the music doesn’t show through the back, and is reasonab ly stiff so it doesn’t flop on a music stand. Avoid ordinary thin typing paper or photocopier paper—we recommend paper of about 26 lb/ream or 100 gsm.

Problems with margins

Some printers may cut off the edges of your music, particularly the bottom edge. This is because most printers need room to grip the paper.

One solution is to move the music further away from the edge by increasing the music’s page margins using

Layout  Document Setup  Margins.

If your music’s layout is sensitive to reformatting, and you find that only (say) the bottom of the page is being cropped off, you can prevent the music reformatting by decreasing the top page margin by (say) 0.2 inches (5mm) when you increase the bottom margin by 0.2 in ches (5mm), so that the music just moves up the page a little. Alternatively, use adjusting the margins (

 7.9 Layout and formatting (Sibelius | Ultimate Only)).

Lock Format before

Problems with double-sided printing

Laser printers tend to wrinkle paper slightly when printing on it. This can make printers misfeed if you put paper back in to print on the other side. This problem will be reduced if you leave the paper to settle for an hour or so after printing the first side, or if you feed th e paper manually sheet by sheet for the second side (which is a bore). Some misfeed problems are also caused by residual static from the corona charge in most laser printers; it may be alleviated by “riffling” the paper before re-feeding.

If your printer misfeeds, try any or all of these:

 Leave the paper to cool for a while after printing the first side  Manual feed the second side  Open the exit flap (if there is one) on the printer, which provides a straighter feed path.

If toner on the first side slips off when printing the second side:

 Leave the paper to cool for a while after printing the first side  If there are settings to feed the paper faster (e.g. a lower print resolution), try these for the

second side.

1.12 Exporting audio files

 6.13 Sibelius Sounds.

Sibelius can save a digital audio file of your score, ready to burn straight onto CD or turn into an MP3 file to post on the Internet. You must be usin g a playback configuration that uses one or more virtual instruments in order to save audio files from Sibelius, such as the supplied Sibelius Sounds sound library (

Exporting the whole score

To create a digital audio file of your entire score in WAV, AIFF, or MP3 format:

 If you are using virtual instruments simultaneously wit h other MIDI devices for playback,

only the staves that are played back through virtual instruments can be export ed as audio. Therefore, you should preferably ensure that your current p layback configuration only uses virtual instruments before you start (

 Choose File  Export  Audio to see the exporting options  You can choose which playback configuration t o use: if the current configuration is unsu it-

able, Sibelius shows you a yellow warning triangle (meaning that only so me of the staves will be exported), or a red warning circle (meaning that none of the staves will be exported), to remind you to choose a more appropriate configuration.

 You can choose whether to export the score from the start of the score, or from the current

position of the playback line, if it is not currently located at the start of the score. If you want to export only a section of the score as audio, a better approach is to use the

as Audio

 For WAV and AIFF file for mats you can specify the bit-depth and the sample rate t o export:

normally a depth of 16 bits and a sample rate of 44.1KHz is sufficient (equivalent to CDquality audio), but if you know what you’re doing you can increase these settings, producing a higher-quality audio file at the expense of requiring more hard disk space.

 For MP3 you can specify the Bit Rate in kbps (kilobytes per second) and the sample rate

(44.1 or 48 kHz).

applicable.

 Sibelius tells you how long the audio file will be, and approxim ately how much hard disk

space it will occupy.

 When you are happy with these settings, click Export at the bottom of the page

(as shown on the right) and export will begin. Sibelius exports t he audio file off-line, meaning that it does not play the score back audibly while it works; instead, it streams the audio data direct to your hard disk. Depending on the complexity of the score and the speed of your computer, export may be faster or slower than real time. This has the advantage that if the sco re is too complex for your computer to be able to play back in real time without glitching or stu ttering, you will still be able to export a glitch-free audio track: it will just take longer to export than it would take to play the score back directly.

 If you want to stop the recording at any point, click Cancel in the progress window that

appears. The partial audio file will be saved in the specified location.

plug-in—see Exporting part of the score below.

The exported MP3 uses the score information for the MP3 ID3 tags where

 6.13 Sibelius Sounds).

 6.2 Playback Devices).

Export Selection

Exporting part of the score

To export just a section of your score as an audio file, first select the passage you want to export, then choose

Home  Plug-ins  Other  Export Selection as Audio. A simple dialog

appears, in which you can choose the filename and folder for the exported audio file . Click

OK, and the audio file is exported.

Exporting each staff as audio

To export each staff in your score as a separate audio file—sometimes called a stem—you can use an included plug-in. If you would like to export only some of the staves in your score, select those staves before running the plug-in; otherwise, to export all staves, make sure nothing is selected, then choose simple dialog appears, in which you can choose whether to

together each staff separately

(which exports e.g. both the right- and left-hand staves of a piano together) or Export

(which exports them as separate audio files).

Home  Plug-ins  Batch Processing  Export Each Staff as Audio. A

Export multi-staff instruments

You can also choose the format of filename to be used, and the location where the audio files should be saved; by default they will be saved alongside the score. Click

OK, and a progress

bar appears as each audio file is exported; this can take a little while, so be patient.

Exporting rehearsal recordings

It can be useful to create audio tracks for individual singers or players in a choir or other ensemble to rehearse their line by making their line louder than all of the other instruments. Sibelius makes this very easy: simply choose

Home  Plug-ins  Batch Processing  Rehearsal Recordings.

This plug-in creates an audio track for each part in a single operation, with one part brought forward in the texture (either by half-muting or scaling dow n the volume of the other staves) and even changing its pan position (so that the principle part is, say, panned left and the accompaniment is panned right, or vice versa). If you don’t need audio tracks for every single part, you can change which parts will be exported by selecting one or more parts from the list and clicking

Once you click

Set/Clear to either include or exclude them from the export.

OK the audio files are exported, ready for burning to audio CD or conversion

to MP3, so that you can email them to your performers, or put them up on your web site.

Burning audio files to CD

If you have a CD-R/RW drive (or “CD burner” as they are often known) in your computer, it should have come supplied with some software for creating data and audio CDs. The exact process for burning audio files saved from Sibelius onto an audio CD will vary according to the program supplied with your CD burner; see its manual for details.

1.13 Exporting video files

 6.13 Sibelius Sounds, 1.3 Sharing on the web.

Sibelius can save a digital video file of your score, ready to burn straight onto DVD or upload to the Internet. You must be using a playback configuration that uses one or more virtual instruments in order to save video files from Sibelius, such as the suppli ed Sibelius Sounds sound library (

Exporting the whole score

To create a digital video file of your entire score in WMV (Windows) or MOV (Mac) format:

 If you are using virtual instruments simultaneously wit h other MIDI devices for playback,

only the staves that are played back through virtual instruments can be exp orted as video. Therefore, you should preferably ensure that your current p layback configuration only uses virtual instruments before you start (

 Choose File  Export  Video to see the exporting options:

 6.13 Sibelius Sounds).

 6.2 Playback Devices).

 You can choose which playback configuration t o use: if the current configuration is unsu it-

 You can choose whether to display th e playback line in your exported video.  You can choose to use the current score paper texture as the background in your video, or

just use a plain white background. (See the score paper texture—note that only the score paper texture is used when exporting videos, not those of parts and saved versions.)

 You can choose which staves you want to be displayed in the video (although the playback

from all staves in the score will be audible unless you’ve muted them in the Mixer—

 6.3 Mixer), to ensure that the music isn’t too squashed to be legible.

Textures on page 152 for details on how to change

Sibelius includes all the staves by default, but you can override this if you prefer; or, if you wish, you can preserve the exact layout of your score—generally you should only do this if you want to adjust the appearance of your score by hand, see

video export

below.

Sibelius reformats the display to make best use of the video proportions—the

Manually preparing scores for

Preview shows

you how the score will look when rendered as a video.

 You can specify the resolution to export at: normally a standard defini tion (480p) is suffi-

ciently legible, but if you know what you’re doing you can increase these settings, producing a higher-quality video file at the expense of requiring more hard disk space. To learn more about different video resolutions, see

 Sibelius tells you how long the video file will be, and the maximum hard disk space it will

A word about video resolutions below.

occupy (in reality this will vary according to how busy your score is and which display options you’ve chosen).

 Filename: determines the name of the file given to the exported video file.  Save to folder: allows you to choose where the exported video file will be saved; click

Browse and choose the desired folder

 When you are happy with these settings, click Export at the bottom of the page

(as shown on the right) and export will begin. Sibelius exports the video file off-line, meaning that it does not play the score back audibly while it works; instead, it streams the audio data direct to your hard disk and synchronizes this with the video frames. Depending on the complexity of the score and the speed of your computer, export may be faster or slower than real time. This has the advantage that if the score is too complex for your computer to be able to play back in real time without glitching or stuttering, you will still be able to export a glitch-free audio track for the video: it will just take longer to export than it would take to play the score back directly.

 If you want to stop the export at any point, click Cancel in the progress window that appears.

Exporting individual parts

It can sometimes be useful to export a video, say for rehearsal purposes, which contai ns only one instrumental part’s music but in which you can hear all the instruments in the score playing back.

To create a digital video file of an individual instrumental part in this way:

 As with exporting the full score, you should preferably ensure that your current playback

configuration only uses virtual instruments before you start (

 Click the + menu at the right-hand end of the document tab bar, below the ribbon.  Click the name of the part you wish to view and Sibelius will open it in a new tab.  Choose File  Export  Video to see the exporting options.  Most of the same options are available as when exporting the full score, with the exception

 6.2 Playback Devices).

of the layout settings for choosing the staves to appear in the video.

 Note that a warning message is displayed, telling you that only th e staves in the current

part will be displayed in the video you export.

 Even though only one part’s music will be displayed, remember that the soundtrack will

contain audio from all the instruments in the score—to change this, use the

Mute and Solo

buttons in the Mixer before exporting ( 6.3 Mixer).

 Choose the display settings, resolution and a filename using the remaining options.  Finally, click Export at the bottom of the page and export will begin.  If you want to stop the export at any point, click Cancel in the progress window that appears.

1.13 Exporting video files

A word about video resolutions

You should carefully consider which resolut ion you intend to export at, since different resolutions have different aspect ratios (the relationship of width to height). Most videos either use a 4:3 ratio or 16:9 ratio for widescreen. If you’re ever sh ort of things to do, you could try measuring your computer monitor or television screen to find out which aspect ratio it uses.

Video resolutions are usually described in terms of width x height (in pixels), or abbreviated to the height in pixels followed by a letter indicating whether the lines of each frame of the video are drawn in sequence (non-interlaced or progressive scanning, abbreviated to “p”) or alternately drawn (interlaced scanning, abbreviated to “i”). Different resolutions will give rise to very different quality videos.

Consider whether your video will be watched on a device with a small screen, such as a smartphone, or on larger devices like tablets or a high-definition monitor or television.

Sibelius exports at a range of standard video resolutions, all of whi ch use progressive scan (indicated by the “p”), suitable for watching on a range of display sizes:

 Fastest (360p) uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, 480 pixels wide by 360 pixels high. This is the lowest

quality video you can export from Sibelius, suitable for watching on small screen devices such as smartphones, but it has the advantage of being quicker to upload to the Internet.

 Standard (480p) uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. This resolut ion

should be sufficient for you to read most scores on standard-definition (SD) screens including tablet devices.

 HD (720p) uses a 16:9 aspect ratio, 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels high. This is the standard

high-definition (HD) video resolution, suitable for watching on any HD display, however the size of the file produced means this will be much slower to upload to the Internet.

 Full HD (1080p) uses a 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 pixels wide by 1 080 pixels high. This is the

highest quality video you can export from Sibelius, though not all HD disp lays support such a high resolution. Videos exported at Full HD are likely to take substantially longer to upload to the Internet.

If you are publishing your video on YouTube or Facebook, note that these services automatically produce lower-resolution versions of videos you upload, so you should export at the highest resolution you can—

 1.3 Sharing on the web.

Manually preparing scores for video export

Sibelius automatically chooses optimal settings for laying out your score based on the resolution you choose to export at. However, if you would prefer to lay out your score by hand for a video display, here are a few things to bear in mind (for more detailed instructions on how to make these kinds of changes,

(Sibelius | Ultimate Only)

 Choose a page size appropriate to the resolution and aspect ratio of the video you will export

 7.1 Document Setup, 7.9 Layout and formatting

at; here are some sensible defaults:

 If exporting at 360p or 480p, set a custom page size of 11.69 inches wide by 8.77 inches

tall (297mm wide by 222.8mm tall);

 If exporting at 720p or 1080p, set a custom page size of 11.69 inches wide by 6.58 inches

tall (297mm wide by 167.1mm tall).

 Unlock all formatting in the score and then check to see if any new page or system breaks

need to be added (

 7.7 Breaks).

 Consider reducing the staff size only if the music on the page is too cramped; aim to fit a sin-

gle system on a page if there are four or more staves in the score, two systems to a page if there are three staves and three systems to a page for one-staff scores.

 To prevent your score being squashed into the center of the page, reduce the t op an d botto m

staff margins to around 5mm (if your score has a title, you may wish to set the top staff margin to be 25mm on the first page only).

 To automatically improve the layout and appearance of the score, you should also consider

making judicious use of these tools:

 Appearance  Reset Notes  Reset Note Spacing  Layout  Staff Spacing  Reset Space Above/Below  Layout  Staff Spacing  Optimize  Layout  Hiding Staves  Hide Empty Staves

The various options in the Layout  Format group.



When you’re happy with the layout and appearance of your score, choose select

Use score layout and then choose any other options you wish before clicking the Export

File  Export  V ideo,

button.

Sharing video files on the web

If you want to publish your music online for people to view and comment on, Sibelius can export a suitable file and upload it directly to a range of video-sharing services—

 1.3 Sharing on the web.

Burning video files to DVD

If you have a DVD-R/RW drive (or “DVD burner” as they are often known) in your computer, it should have come supplied with some software for creating DVDs. The exact process for burning video files saved from Sibelius onto a DVD will vary according to the program supplied with your DVD burner; see its manual for details.

1.14 Exporting graphics

Sibelius can export (save) a passage or page of music as a picture in various standard graphics file formats, and you can even just copy and paste graphics from Sibelius directly into another application, such as Microsoft Word. This means you can easily include music in other documents, e.g. articles, worksheets, essays, music books, cover designs, posters and program notes.

All music examples in this Reference Guide were exported directly from Sibelius into Adob e FrameMaker—no scissors and glue were required!

There are three main ways to export graphics from Sibelius:

 Copy and paste directly into another application—see Copying graphics to the clipboard

below

 Exporting files in a variety of formats via File  Export  Graphics—see Export Graphics

below

 Exporting the whole score and/or its instrumental parts as PDF files— 1.20 Exporting

PDF files

If your final document will consist mostly of music, you can alternatively use Sibelius itself as the program in which to assemble music and graphics, e.g. to create worksheets or scores with a graphical cover page—

Copying graphics to the clipboard

Sibelius allows you to copy an area of a score to the clipboard, which you can then paste directly into another application as a graphic.

 If you want to export a specific bar or passage, select it first  Choose Home  Clipboard  Select Graphic (shortcut Alt+G or G)  If you made a selection, a dashed box appears around the selection. If you didn’t make a

selection, the cursor will turn into a crosshair and you can click and drag around the area of the score you wish to export.

 Adjust the size of the marquee (see below) so that it encloses exactly what you want to copy  Choose Home  Clipboard  Copy (shortcut Ctrl+C or C)  Switch to the destination application, and choose Edit  Paste (shortcut normally Ctrl+V or

V) or Edit  Paste Special.

You can set the resolution of the graphic and choose whether Sibelius should export in monochrome or color from the

When you use copy and paste graphics export, Sibelius produces a bitmap graphic. If you want to use a vector graphic, use File below.

 4.18 Importing graphics.

Other page of File  Preferences— 1.26 Preferences.

 Export  Graphics dialog instead—see Export Graphics

Adjusting the marquee

To adjust the marquee, you can:

 Click and drag a handle to extend the marquee in that direction  Hold down Ctrl or  and drag either left- or right-hand h andles to snap th e ends of the ma r-

quee to barlines

 Hold down Shift and drag any h andles to enlarge the marquee proportionally in both direc-

tions, e.g. to make the marquee taller both above and below the staff, grab one of the top

handles and hold down

Shift as you drag to extend the marquee both upwards and down-

wards.

If you have a passage or system selection in the score prior to carrying out the above steps, Sibelius will automatically draw a box around that area when you choo se

Select Graphic. The

box will snap to the top and bottom of staves and so you will probably find it necessary to extend the selection both up and down. To do this, hold down

Shift and drag the top handle of

the box up.

Inserting graphics into Microsoft Word

To place a graphic created in Sibelius that you have copied to the clipboard using the steps above into a Word document:

 Position the caret in your Word document where you want the graphic to go  Choose Edit  Paste, shortcut Ctrl+V or V. The graphic will appear in your document.  Now, increase or decrease the size of the music by dragging any corner of the box. Do not

drag an edge, otherwise the music will stretch and lose the correct aspect ratio. (Type or Z to undo if you do this by accident.)

In some versions of Microsoft Word, you may find that attempting to paste a graphic from another application does not work correctly. If you find this to be the case, choose

Special

and, from the list of available formats, choose Bitmap.

Edit  Paste

Beware of editing the graphic within Word—its graphics editor does not handle music well and might produce unexpected results. Use a dedicated graphics program instead.

Export Graphics

Instead of using the clipboard, you can export a graphics file to disk. Sibelius allows you to export the whole score, a single page, one or more systems or a specific area of the score just as easily:

 If you want to export one or more systems, first select the desired systems as a passage, then

choose

 If you want to export one or more whole pages, or the whole score, just choose File  Export 

Graphic

File  Export  Graphic, then under Pages, choose Selected systems.

, then under Pages, choose All or Pages and enter the page numbers you wish to

export as appropriate.

 If you want to export a specific area of the score, make a passage selection around the area

you wish to export, then choose

Home  Clipboard  Select Graphic (shortcut Alt+G or G).

The cursor will change into a cross, at which point you can fine-tune the selected area by dragging any of the marquee’s handles (see above). Now choose under

Pages choose Graphic selection.

File  Export  Graphic, and

Ctrl+Z

The

File  Export  Graphics page has the following options:

 Graphics format: lists the various graphics file formats that Sibelius can save. See Graphics

formats

for a discussion of the relative merits of each format and its suitability for various

applications.

 Options: further options, some of which are only available for certain formats:

 Monochrome (TIFF, PNG, BMP only): unless you need to export a score that contains

colored objects (or imported graphics that use color), or need an anti-aliased image, it’s a good idea to leave this switched on. Saving monochrome graphics files keeps the size of the resulting file down to the minimum, but doesn’t compromise any quality (provided you don’t need color).

Pinnacle Systems Sibelius - 2018.11 Reference Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Introduction

Welcome to Sibelius

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius Ultimate

System Requirements and Compatibility Information

Avid Master Account

Avid Application Manager

Join the Avid Artist Community

On-screen reference

Typography and cross-references

Basic terminology

Resources

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius |Ultimate

Keypad in Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate

Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate and the Ribbon

Working with the ribbon

The Sibelius window

The ribbon tabs

Groups and controls

Keyboard access

Screen tips

Launching related dialogs

Single document interface

Saving your working environment

Notes for upgraders

Undo and Redo

Windows users

Mac users

Undo level

Connecting external MIDI devices

Connecting MIDI devices to your computer

Connecting MIDI devices directly via USB

Connecting MIDI devices via a MIDI interface

File tab

1.1 Working with files

Creating a score

File size

Saving

Auto-save

Backups

Catalog information

User-editable files

Scorch templates and textures

Quick Look (Mac only)

Spotlight (Mac only)

1.2 Sharing and emailing files

Sharing files with other users of Sibelius

Sharing files with people who don’t use Sibelius

Sending files via email

Sending files via email from another program

Files on Windows or Mac

Opening Mac scores on Windows

Opening Windows scores on Mac

1.3 Sharing on the web

Send Using Email

Publishing for others to view, purchase and print

1.4 Starting a new score

Manuscript paper

Setting up your score

1.5 Opening files from previous versions

Update Score dialog

Other settings to consider

1.6 Opening MIDI files

Importing a MIDI file

Import options

Recommended import options

Batch conversion

Cleaning up MIDI files

SMPTE offset

Technical details

Downloading MIDI files

1.7 Opening MusicXML files

What is MusicXML?

Creating MusicXML files in Finale

Opening a MusicXML file

Warning messages

Importing MusicXML files saved in a sequencer