The relationship between technology and music has developed at a rapid pace over the past twenty years and the computer is now central to areas such as composition, music teaching, and music publishing.
The leading music notation software application used today is Sibelius. Many people buy Sibelius for their studies, teaching or composing and arranging but never really fully get to grips with it. Technology can be daunting, but doesn’t have to be. Understanding the fundamentals is all it takes to get you going. Sibelius is something you can use as little or as much of as you like – don’t be fooled by complicated dialog boxes. If you’re just trying to create simple arrangements, you won’t need to delve too deep and with a few tips and tricks you’ll be away in no time.
Breaking down the barrier of the technology will allow you to explore your individual creative ideas freely and be able to just get your musical themes into Sibelius quickly without really thinking about how to do it.
Sibelius is there as a tool. It doesn’t write the music for you, but allows you to experiment with orchestration, develop new techniques, and streamline the process of getting the music down on paper with printed parts and beautifully laid out scores.
A few tips and tricks:
Use as many of the keyboard shortcuts as possible – they’re easy to remember:
T – Time Signature
K – Key Signature
R – Repeat a note, chord or selection
I - Instruments
Automatically create your own scale sheets:
Go to Plug-ins > Other > Scales & Arpeggios and choose the type of scales you want.
Change all the text fonts in the score from Times New Roman to Tahoma, for example:
Go to House Style > Edit All Fonts and change the ‘Main Text Font’.
Flip stems or slurs – select them and hit X
Tutorial videos are available online and you’ll find lots of useful information on the Sibelius Blog which you can sign up to, the Sibelius Helpcenter, and Sibelius forum.
