Scoring Notes hasn’t suddenly become a travel blog, but if you come here often enough you’ll find occasional road reports, especially from the NAMM Show, the MOLA conferences, and other occasions where this business of music notation has resulted in memorable journeys, like trips to London, Milwaukee, Arizona, and New Orleans, just to name a few.
Today I’m happy to report on a quick and fun trip to Seattle in the middle of a surprisingly busy summer.
Owing to the three-hour time difference, I was up a little too early, and my day started at the iconic Pike Place Market, even before the fishmongers arrived!
Hoping to get a jolt of caffeine, I was stymied — the original Starbucks location didn’t open until 6 am.
Is this expression one of bewilderment, bemusement, or bedazzlement? I can’t remember.
In any event, I knew I would eventually find a coffee, and in this town, it’s impossible to go to far without it. Properly jolted, I knew my day would be one for the history books.
The importance of Bob Zawalich to the field of music notation software, and especially Sibelius, is hard to overstate. For several decades, working independently, he’s written plug-ins for Sibelius that extend the features of that software in countless ways. His output is in the hundreds of publicly available plug-ins, and if you include the many custom creations he’s made, they extend into the thousands. Bob is a regular contributor to Scoring Notes, where his detailed and informative posts serve to educate readers on the intricacies of his creations — not just about what they do, but usually why he did it and how.
Bob began his professional career at Microsoft as one of its very first employees. He was a software designer who worked on the first Windows version of Microsoft Word. The Computer History Museum makes the source code for that project available as one of the Software Gems in its Historical Source Code Series. After leaving Microsoft, Bob pursued and received a degree in music composition. His love for music and technology led him to be an early adopter — and proselytizer — of music notation software. He saw that the computer could do the more tedious tasks of music notation more quickly and accurately that humans could, and, well, the rest is history.
Bob has given so generously of his time and knowledge to so many people; imagining Sibelius without Bob’s contributions simply can’t be done. At NYC Music Services, we keep a tally of all of the Sibelius plug-ins publicly available through Sibelius, most of which Bob wrote. In fact, he originally compiled the list himself and then turned it over to me to keep it up as a resource for the community to refer to when needed.
For more than 20 years, Bob has been an invaluable colleague. Although our presence on opposite coasts has facilitated many interesting collaborations over the years — Bob’s a late night owl and I’m an early riser, and when you factor in the time zone difference we’ve more than once exchanged timely correspondence on either side — the physical distance was an impediment to meeting in person.
That all changed on this trip. Behold!
It’s always nice when you meet someone in person and all of the positive qualities you’ve sensed from remote correspondence are confirmed, and more. That was certainly true with Bob. He came to meet my wife and me, and we embarked on more than five hours of sightseeing and good food that we’ll remember for a long time to come.
Bob devised an itinerary that was like his code: thoughtful, detailed, but also responsive and flexible to adapt the needs of the user — er, traveler. With Seattle’s famously fickle weather, we had plenty of options regardless of the climate. Indeed, the day started out cold and gray, and it ended in brilliant sunshine.
We’ve often half-joked on Scoring Notes that we will build a statue to Bob. Well, if you squint hard enough, it appears that they’ve named a street after him in Seattle already!
(Actually, Dzidzilalich means “little crossing-over place” in Lushootseed, one of the languages of the Coast Salish people, and refers to one of the several villages that once stood here, according to the Waterfront Seattle web site. To honor the history of this region, the name Dzidzilalich was added in 2023 to a stretch of Alaskan Way and the newer Elliott Way near the waterfront, which is bustling with pedestrians, cyclists, and motor traffic.)
Seattle is home to so many great musician colleagues, and surely with more time to spare I would have visited with more of them. Before leaving, though, I did have the opportunity to meet with Jacob Winkler, another invaluable individual in our music notation world. Jake has a full-time job as the artistic director of the Northwest Boychoir, is an instructor at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, and was artistic director of the Seattle Girls Choir from 2009 to 2022.
But I know Jake from his robust activity in the Finale community for many years, and especially as a member of the music prep team of RPM Seattle, run by our late colleague, Robert Puff.
In addition to serving on Robert’s music prep team, Jake contributed many articles to Robert’s blog, Of Note, as well as other passion projects like the Finale JetStream profile for Stream Deck. Jake and I had a drink on the rooftop, and we reminisced about our work with Robert, recalling what a talented individual he was and reflecting upon his importance to our field.
It’s an appropriate twist that it was through Robert Puff that I first met Bob Zawalich, and discovered the wonderful world of his plug-ins. In early 2008, Robert and I were having a conversation about a Sibelius file that wasn’t displaying cautionary time signatures at the ends of systems, because of the way the originator of the file applied them in the document. We realized that there was no automatic way to check for these or reset them to always display, other than manually re-applying each one. That’s when Robert told me that he personally knew Bob Zawalich. Robert offered to ring up Bob, who, like Robert, also lived in the Seattle area, to see if he could come up with a solution. A few days later, Bob’s creation Cautionary Time Signatures appeared in our inboxes, and eventually made its way to the download page for all Sibelius users to enjoy.
Seeing Bob and Jake was a reminder that despite the “0s and 1s” that comprise our digital lives, it’s the people behind those bits and bytes that make it worthwhile, and possible.
Thanks guys, and Seattle, for a terrific visit!
Listen to the podcast episode
You might already know Bob’s work from his helpful presence on Sibelius forums, or from his many Scoring Notes blog posts, or even from hearing about him on this podcast. But do you know the man behind the code? On this episode, Bob Zawalich joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald to talk all about his fascinating life and early career, and the key moments that led to him being one of the most important contributors to our community of music notation software users. Listen now:
David Toub
Please come to Philly sometime. Would love to meet. It’s an awesome city, very underrated, and has better food than NYC and is also far less expensive. Just sayin.
Brian Monroe
It is true that the sidewalks roll up at 7 pm. I’ve had people come to visit and then tell me (the next morning) that they went to a symphony performance, got out at 10:00 pm—and there was nothing open to get a coffee. It was worse when I grew up in the 70s there but it still is a strange place to visit if you’re used to elsewhere.
Dave Metzger
What a great post, Philip! Bob is indeed a living legend and Sibelius treasure (I love his shirt too, btw)! Also wonderful to remember Robert, and that you had a chance to get together with Jacob as well.
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Dave! It was nice to visit the Pacific Northwest. Next time I will have to make my way to Oregon!