Score preparation and production notes
Originally appearing as a document that composer David MacDonald created for his weekly master class, this bullet-list of score preparation and production notes will improve the quality of your performance materials in no time. To it we have added relevant links from Scoring Notes and other sources.
Comma sense: Command Search in Sibelius
Use of Sibelius's Command Search, summoned with a single press of the comma key, is a habit worth forming. A practical guide to its use, the payoff on mobile, and the middle ground between muscle memory and Ribbon-hunting.
Jump to it: tips for using Dorico’s Jump Bar
Dorico's Jump Bar, summoned with a single press of J, is one of those features that quietly earns its keep once you make it a habit. A practical guide to commands, navigation, and the wide middle ground between muscle memory and menu-diving.
PDF Batch Utilities get a major rebuild and a brand new app
The PDF Batch Utilities for music printing get their biggest update yet: native Apple Silicon, codesigning, new icons, bookmarks in output files, bug fixes, and a brand new app — PDF-Counter.
Calibrating printers — and workflows
Specific lessons about calibrating a Ricoh printer to fine-tune music printing translate into general advice for optimizing your workflow, for the benefit of your future self, and possibly others.
Specify bars per system in Sibelius
A Sibelius plug-in to easily break a passage selection of bars into systems, specifying the number of bars in each system.
Improve lyric hyphen position at the end of a system in Sibelius
Sometimes in Sibelius, a lyric hyphen that occurs at the end of a system will collide with the preceding syllable. The best fix is the least obvious one.
Leaving Finale behind
The last in a series of several articles about the end of Finale's support. How to archive your work, update the Finale files, and exporting to MusicXML and PDF. And, some thoughts about alternatives to Finale.
Using Finale in the unsupported era
The second in a series of several articles about the end of Finale's support. This focuses on how to use Finale for at least a while longer, after the period of official support has ended.
