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Sibelius First 2018.1
Reference Guide
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Pinnacle Systems Sibelius First 2018.1 Reference Guide

Sibelius® | First Reference Guide
version 2018.1
Legal Notices
© 2018 Avid Technology, Inc., (“Avid”), all rights reserved. This guide may not be duplicated in whole or in part without the written consent of Avid.
Bonjour, the Bonjour logo, and the Bonjour symbol are trademarks of Apple Computer, 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 9329-65929-00 REV A 01/18
ii
Contents
Introduction 1
The story of Sibelius ............... 3
About this Reference Guide ......... 5
Working with the ribbon ............ 9
Undo and Redo .................. 15
Connecting external MIDI devices . . . 17
1 File tab 19
1.1 Working with files ............. 21
1.2 Sharing and emailing files ....... 25
1.3 Sharing on the web ............ 29
1.4 Starting a new score ............ 31
1.5 Opening MIDI files ............ 35
1.6 Opening MusicXML files ....... 39
1.7 PhotoScore Lite ............... 43
1.8 AudioScore Lite ............... 57
1.9 Printing ..................... 65
1.10 Exporting audio files .......... 73
1.11 Exporting video files .......... 75
1.12 Exporting graphics ............ 79
1.13 Exporting MIDI files .......... 81
1.14 Exporting MusicXML files ..... 83
1.15 Exporting to previous versions . . 85
1.16 Exporting to Avid Scorch ...... 89
1.17 Exporting Scorch web pages .... 95
1.18 Exporting PDF files ........... 99
1.19 Preferences ................ 101
1.20 Display settings ............. 103
1.21 Keyboard shortcuts .......... 105
2 Home tab 107
2.1 Selections and passages ........ 109
2.2 Ideas ....................... 115
2.3 Instruments ................. 121
2.4Staves...................... 125
2.5 Bars and bar rests ............. 127
2.6 Color ...................... 129
2.7 Filters and Find .............. 131
2.8 Hiding objects ............... 133
2.9 Sibelius | Cloud Sharing ....... 135
2.10 Plug-ins ................... 137
3 Note Input tab 143
3.1 Introduction to note input ...... 145
3.2 Keypad ..................... 147
3.3 Mouse input ................. 151
3.4 Alphabetic and step-time input . . 153
3.5 Keyboard window ............ 161
3.6 Guitar tab input .............. 163
3.7 Fretboard window ............ 165
3.8 Guitar notation and tab ........ 167
3.9 Triplets and other tuplets ....... 171
3.10 Transposing ................ 175
3.11 Note input options ............177
3.12 Input Devices ............... 179
3.13 Flexi-time .................. 187
3.14 Voices ..................... 193
3.15 Arrange ................... 197
3.16 Transformations ............. 199
3.17 HyperControl™ ............. 203
4 Notations tab 207
4.1 Clefs ....................... 209
4.2 Key signatures ............... 213
4.3 Time signatures .............. 215
4.4 Barlines .................... 217
4.5 Lines ...................... 219
4.6 Hairpins .................... 223
4.7 Slurs ....................... 225
4.8 Symbols .................... 229
4.9 Noteheads .................. 231
4.10 Percussion ................. 235
4.11 Beam groups ............... 239
4.12 Beam positions .............. 243
4.13 Importing graphics ........... 245
4.14 Brackets and braces .......... 247
4.15 Accidentals ................. 249
4.16 Arpeggios .................. 251
4.17 Articulations ................ 253
4.18 Grace notes ................ 255
4.19 Jazz articulations ............ 257
4.20 Repeat bars ................. 259
4.21 Stems and leger lines ......... 261
4.22 Ties ....................... 263
4.23 Tremolos .................. 265
iii
Contents
5 Text tab 267
5.1 Working with text .............269
5.2 Common text styles ............275
5.3 Figured bass and Roman numerals 281
5.4 Instrument names .............283
5.5 Typography ..................287
5.6 Lyrics ......................291
5.7 Chord symbols ...............297
5.8 Edit Chord Symbols ...........305
5.9 Rehearsal marks ..............307
5.10 Bar numbers ................309
5.11 Page numbers ...............311
5.12 Wildcards ..................313
6 Play tab 317
6.1 Working with playback .........319
6.2 Playback Devices .............321
6.3Mixer.......................331
6.4 Live Tempo ..................341
6.5 Live Playback ................343
6.6 Interpretation of your score ......345
6.7 Performance .................349
6.8 Repeats .....................353
6.9 Video .......................357
6.10 Timecode and hit points .......361
6.11 Sibelius First Sounds .........363
6.12 MIDI for beginners ...........365
6.13 Virtual instruments for beginners 369
6.14 Working with virtual instruments 375
6.15 ReWire ....................381
6.16 MIDI messages ..............385
6.17 SoundWorld ................393
7 Layout tab 397
7.1 Document Setup ..............399
7.2 Title pages ...................403
7.3 Staff spacing .................405
7.4 Magnetic Layout ..............409
7.5 Auto Breaks ..................413
7.6 Breaks ......................415
7.7 Layout and formatting ..........419
7.8 Attachment ..................423
7.9 Working with parts ............425
8 Appearance tab 429
8.1 Music engraving ..............431
8.2 House Style ..................437
8.3 Note spacing .................441
8.4 Music fonts ..................445
10 Review tab 447
10.1 Annotations .................449
10.1 Comments ..................451
10.2 Highlight ...................453
10.3 Versions ....................455
11 View tab 457
11.1 Document view ..............459
11.2 Zoom ......................463
11.3 Invisibles ...................465
11.4 Panels .....................467
11.5 Window options .............469
Glossary 471
Keyboard shortcuts 481
Visual index 489
Index 497
iv

Introduction

1
Introduction
2

The story of Sibelius

The story of Sibelius
Twins Ben and Jonathan Finn first began work on Sibelius when they were students in 1987, and spent six years of their spare time developing a vast range of sophisticated features, with an intuitive user interface and built-in intelligence that had never been seen in previous music programs. In 1993, after graduating from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Finns started their own company to sell the program, unsure of what to expect.
Sibelius proved to be an instant success, and over the course of the following decade the Finns’ company grew beyond all expectations, with offices in the USA, UK, and Australia, and customers in more than 100 countries worldwide.
In 2006, Sibelius was acquired by Avid, makers of Pro Tools, Media Composer and other industry-standard products for digital media production and music creation, and continues to go from strength to strength. In fact, it’s the world’s best-selling music notation software.
Sibelius First itself was introduced in 2008. A simplified version of Sibelius suitable for home use, it produces the same beautiful scores as its big brother, but with some of the more esoteric or advanced features removed.

Who uses Sibelius?

Famous Sibelius users include conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, composer Steve Reich, cho­ral composer John Rutter, rock guitarist Andy Summers, jazz musician Jamie Cullum, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. Top publishers such as Hal Leonard, Music Sales and Boosey & Hawkes use Sibelius both for traditional publishing and to deliver music via the Internet straight to a customer’s printer.
Sibelius First is designed to make writing and sharing music as easy as possible, for every kind of musician—aspiring composers, arrangers and songwriters, students, instrumental teachers, and more besides.
3
4

About this Reference Guide

About this Reference Guide
This Reference Guide is a comprehensive guide to all of Sibelius First’s features. For explana­tions of Sibelius First’s more basic features, and when familiarizing yourself with the program, you will probably find it easier to refer to the tutorials, which you can find in File Help within the program.

Chapters and topics

This Reference Guide is divided into 10 chapters, corresponding to the 10 tabs at the top of the Sibelius First window, containing smaller topics. You will find a list of all these topics in the
Contents, though you will probably find the Index even more useful for finding information
on specific areas of the program. Check the Visual index if you know how you want something to look, but you don’t know what it’s called. The Glossary explains musical and technical terms.

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 Help in the File tab, or type the short­cut F1 or ?.
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.
5
To search within the on-screen Reference Guide, use the Edit  Find feature, or alternatively:
In Adobe Reader, you can simply type into the Find box on the toolbar shown below left,
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 First is via the ribbon, a wide band of
command buttons that appear at the top of the screen when you click a tab like File or Home. Each tab describes a related set of commands (Note Input, Notations, Text, Layout, etc.); when 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 mysteri­ous to you, don’t worry.
4.1 Clefs means “see the Clefs topic at the start of chapter 4 of the Reference Guide.”

Basic terminology

Most of the computer terminology used in this Reference Guide will be understood by 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”) ^ Ctrl None
Shift Shift Option Alt Return Return Enter Enter (on numeric keypad)
(on main keyboard)
6
About this Reference Guide
Notice how, somewhat confusingly, the key labeled Ctrl (or sometimes Control, depending on the model of your keyboard) on Mac is not the same as the key labeled Ctrl on Windows. Mac shortcuts using Ctrl are very rare in Sibelius First, but where they appear, they are writ­ten using the symbol ^ (as it appears in menus etc. on Mac) to avoid confusion for Windows users.
Sibelius First 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 A is written as a capital letter, don’t type Shift unless explicitly told to do so. Similarly, for standard shortcuts like Ctrl+? or ? where both / and ? exist on the same key, you actually type Ctrl+/ or / without using Shift.
Similarly, “Alt+click or -click” means hold down the Alt (Windows) or  (Mac) key and
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 but- ton. If you are using a MacBook or other portable Mac, to achieve the equivalent of a right­click, hold the Ctrl key and click the trackpad.
To drag something means to point at it with the mouse, and then click and hold the left
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—Keyboard shortcuts for more information.)
“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 Enter.
Less well-known terminology is in the Glossary at the end of this book.

American and British English

Sibelius First and this book use American English, but for the benefit of readers in other coun­tries, some non-American terms such as “crotchet” are included in parentheses.
British readers may be interested to know that in America, both “bar” and “measure” are used (so for universality we’ve opted for “bar”), and “staff” means British “stave.” Any British readers who are offended by the American spelling of “center,” “color” and so on will just have to use a pen on the screen.
7
8

Working with the ribbon

Working with the ribbon
The ribbon is the wide band of command buttons that appears at the top of the Sibelius First window, housing all of the features of the program, organized according to task. In addition to the ribbon, every Sibelius First document window also contains other useful controls.

The Sibelius First window

The picture below shows a typical Sibelius First window, so you can see where the ribbon is, and several other useful controls at the top and bottom of the window:
Ribbon tabs
The ribbon
Document tabs
Quick Access Toolbar
(Windows only)
Information
read-outs
Title bar
Status bar Zoom controlsDocument view
Find box
buttons
Window buttons
(at top left on Mac)
Help button
Minimize ribbon
Switch tab
Open new tab
Here’s a quick guided tour to the Sibelius First window, starting at the top and working our way down:
Quick Access Toolbar (Windows only): this has three important buttons: Save, Undo and
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 File and Edit menus respectively.)
Title bar: this shows the filename of the document, and the name of the current dynamic part
or version being viewed (if applicable). On Windows, you will see an asterisk (*) 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.)
9
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 First shows a list of matching controls: use /to choose the one you need, then hit Return to be taken there. Sibelius First helpfully highlights the control for you. Sibelius First 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 Control+0 (Mac) or Alt+0 (Windows) to enter the Find in Ribbon Search field (you can define your own 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 reappear 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 File tab of the ribbon.
The ribbon: discussed in more detail below.Document tabs: you can open multiple different views of the same document—e.g. a full
score 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 Full Score.
You can open new tabs using the + button at the right-hand side of the document tab bar, or
through other options that switch the view (e.g. hitting W switches between the full score and the dynamic part corresponding to the current selection).
Open new tab: this + button shows a menu that allows you to open a new tab containing a
different 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.
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; the instrument on which the current selection resides, if there is one; the range of the current
10
Working with the ribbon
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 10 tabs. 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 nine 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, share your music online, 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 nine 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 nine tabs contain the following kinds of commands:
Home: basic score setup, like adding or removing instruments and bars, plus key editing
operations, including clipboard operations and Sibelius First’s powerful filters.
Note Input: commands relating to alphabetic, step-time and Flexi-time input, plus note 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 text, including clefs, 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 numbering options.
Play: choice of playback configuration, mixer, transport (playback) controls, options for how
Sibelius First should interpret your score during playback, and features for writing music to video.
Layout: document setup options such as page and staff size, staff spacing, hiding staves,
Magnetic Layout, plus some formatting controls.
Appearance: options that affect the visual appearance of your score, including note spacing
and instrument name format, plus commands to reset or change the design or position of the objects in your score.
Review: add sticky note comments or highlights and create and view multiple versions of the
same score.
11
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, hide 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 buttons in the Notations Common group shown in the picture above use drop-down graphical galleries.
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.
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, 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 Layout tab are collapsed, and the Staff Spac-
group has been opened by clicking the button that represents the collapsed group.
ing
12
Working with the ribbon
Sibelius First has so many commands that in order to ensure every group on every tab is not shown collapsed, your screen display has to be at least 1920 pixels wide!
13

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:
To access a tab, simply type the key tip shown for that tab. For example, type L to switch to the
Layout tab:
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 Alt (Windows) or Ctrl (Mac), you can
also navigate around the tabs and the controls in each tab using the arrow keys or Tab and
Shift-Tab, then use either Space, Return or Enter to activate the button or other control that is
currently in focus.

Screen tips

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 Home
Clipboard Select Graphic
. Notice how a keyboard short­cut 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, launches a dialog containing further options relating to the commands in that group.
In the picture above, the mouse pointer is over the dialog launcher button in Layout Document
, which launches the Document Setup dialog, in which you can change the page size,
Setup
orientation and margins with additional options over and above those on the ribbon.
14
Working with the ribbon

Saving your working environment

Sibelius First 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 First will:
Open the document window to the same size and position you had used when you last closed
it.
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 which “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.

Notes for upgraders

If you have upgraded from Sibelius 6 First, Sibelius 6 Student or earlier, you may be a little disorientated when you first run your new version of Sibelius First 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 ear­lier versions of Sibelius First:
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 and coloring), Notations tab (for multiple voices) and the Text tab (for chord symbol settings). You can still access a cut-down version of the Edit menu by right­clicking on a selection in your score, just as in previous versions of Sibelius First.
View menu items are found in the View tab.Notes menu items found in the Note Input tab.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
versions of Sibelius First.
Play menu items are found in the Play tab.Layout menu items are found in the Layout tab, except for Reset Design and Reset Position,
which are on the Appearance tab.
Plug-ins: the most useful ones appear individually on the ribbon next to related features of
the program. The Home tab also has a dedicated Plug-ins gallery with even more plug-ins.
Window menu items are found on the View tab.Help menu items are found in the File tab, in the Help pane.
As far as possible, keyboard shortcuts are the same as in previous versions of Sibelius First, so power users who have memorized a lot of shortcuts should feel right at home.
15
16

Undo and Redo

Undo and Redo
Two of the most important features in Sibelius First 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 First.

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 First document window, as shown on the right.
To undo the last thing you did, click the left-pointing arrow, or type the shortcut Ctrl+Z. You can click the menu part of the button to show the undo history menu: click on any item in the menu to undo directly to that point.
To redo an operation you didn’t mean to undo, click the right-point­ing arrow, or type the shortcut Ctrl+Y. As with undo, you can click 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.)

Mac users

On Mac, undo and redo are found in the Edit menu. Choose Edit  Undo, or type the shortcut
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 Sibelius First— it won’t say Undo Sneeze, entertaining though that might be.)
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 Edit Redo, or type the shortcut Y. Again, the Edit menu tells you what it was you just redid.
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.
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Connecting external MIDI devices

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 First. This topic takes you through the first two steps, and the last step is described in 3.12 Input Devices on page 179.

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 instruments 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) to your computer, 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 First—3.12 Input Devices.
You should switch on the power on your USB-connected MIDI devices before running Sibel-
ius First. Failure to do so may result in Sibelius First 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.

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.
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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 First—3.12 Input Devices on page 179.
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File tab

File tab
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1.1 Working with files

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 First 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 First, and how to import and export files in various formats.

Creating a score

There are several ways to start a new score in Sibelius First—1.4 Starting a new score.

File size

Sibelius files typically occupy around 20K plus 1K per page (excluding any imported graph­ics), even for band or orchestral music. This means you can fit 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 First.

Saving

Saving works just like in any other program, using File  Save As (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+S or
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, video and PDF; for more details, see the relevant topics in this Reference Guide.
A convenient place to save is the Scores folder that Sibelius First has helpfully created for you.
On Windows, the Scores folder is created inside your My Documents folder; on Mac, it is inside your user Documents folder.
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.

Auto-save

Sibelius First 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 First makes a copy of your score and saves it into a special hidden folder.
If Sibelius First 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 First normally, it deletes all the files in the special folder—so it’s
essential that you don’t save any files in there yourself!

Backups

Each time you save, the score (with a version number added to the name) is also saved 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. This folder stores the last 200 scores you saved; 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 First auto-saves; but unlike auto-saved scores, backup scores are not deleted when you close Sibelius First.
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Catalog information

The File Info pane can be used to enter information about your score, such as its title, com­poser, arranger, copyright, and so on, which is automatically used when you publish your score on the Internet (1.17 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 First,
5.12 Wildcards.

User-editable files

The standard files included with Sibelius First 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 applica-
tion 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\
MacOSX: /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Avid/Sibelius
On Windows, you can go quickly to this location by clicking the Sibelius First (User Data) shortcut in the Sibelius First program group in your Start menu. The application data folder is hidden by default and will not be otherwise visible in Windows Explorer. If you wish to access this folder via Explorer, go to Control Panel and click Folder Options from any open Explorer window. Click the View tab and from the Files and Folders list choose Show hidden files and
.
folders
Inside the Sibelius First application data folder you will find various folders whose 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 First will use it
when you next start the program. Files you have added or created can also be deleted with no ill side-effects.

Scorch templates and textures

You can create your own Scorch templates and paper/desk textures. Place them inside the rele-
vant folder in the application data folder, and Sibelius First will detect them. Scorch templates go in the folder called Scorch templates, and textures (in Windows BMP format only) in the folder called Textures.

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 docu­ments 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.
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1.1 Working with files
Sibelius First fully supports Quick Look, so instead of the usual document icon, you will see a thumbnail of the first page of 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 grabbing 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 pre­view it using Quick Look (see above), or double-click to open it in Sibelius First.
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