I’m thrilled to announce the re-launch of this blog today as Scoring Notes.
As described on our About page:
We love music notation software and related products and technology, so that’s what we cover here. You’ll find timely news, in-depth coverage about the field, and honest reviews about products you use every day. Our advice, ranging from quick tips to heady tutorials, will give you a leg up in your important work. You’ll learn about the interesting people in our field and find out our opinions on ever-changing developments in the industry.
Of course, none of this is new. Since I started running the blog more than four years ago from its origins as the unofficial Sibelius Blog, it’s naturally evolved into a site that features articles about a variety of products and perspectives about our field.
This is not to say that the blog’s origins aren’t a source of pride. Daniel Spreadbury started the blog and contributed hundreds of posts to it. Daniel started working at Sibelius in May 1999 and eventually became senior product manager until his departure from Avid in October 2012. As you probably know, Daniel is now product marketing manager at Steinberg, where he’s worked on its scoring program Dorico since November 2012.
It was a great honor to have been asked by Daniel to continue the blog then, but daunting to follow in his footsteps. I took comfort in the fact that his first post was one of humble beginnings, and yet he managed to do quite well. I hope the same can be said for what I’ve been able to contribute here.
All this sounds like a coda, which — to extend the musical analogy — I suppose it is, but only to a movement, not the whole symphony. We’ll certainly continue to feature regular tips and tutorials about Sibelius and many other products. We’ve got a few new things to show, too.
What’s new
In addition to the new name and design makeover, you’ll notice a whole new Reviews category, so you can more easily find what you’re looking for when a product gets released or updated.
You may have noticed that we’ve been featuring more contributors the blog lately, from the incomparable Bob Zawalich and his bottomless fount of plug-in knowledge to Alexander Plötz‘s dissertation on Dorico, not to mention terrific recent contributions from Jeremy Borum, David MacDonald, and Tristan Noon. We’ve got more planned, and if you’ve got a tip or an anecdote that you’ve been eager to share with the world about music notation, software, tech, or anything related, please get in touch.
What’s moved
We’ve moved a couple of Sibelius-specific resources to a new home: The big list of Sibelius plug-ins and the RSS broadcast of new and updated plug-ins are now on the Resources page of our newly-redesigned company site at NYC Music Services — be sure to check that out as well.
Follow the blog
Twitter followers will notice that the @sibeliusblog handle has been replaced with @scoringnotes.
On Facebook, we’ll continue to keep our 10,000+ followers at NYC Music Services updated about what’s happening on the blog, but please take a moment to follow the blog on the brand-new Scoring Notes page @scoringnotes to make sure you don’t miss anything.
A shout-out to the team of Gabrielle Green and Alex Panagiotopoulos at Kingston Creative who had the creative and technical wizardry needed to make this all happen, and particularly to Joey Heflich for his tireless work on this site, and for whom no detail was too small or unimportant.
With all that said, the real business of this site now continues apace — bringing you informative content to enlighten your work. Thank you, as always, for reading!
Daniel Spreadbury
Congratulations on the relaunch and the redesign, Philip. The new site looks great, and I couldn’t be happier to see the site continue to grow and to prosper under your stewardship. Here’s to many more years of excellent coverage of creative music technology under the new banner of Scoring Notes!
Philip Rothman
Daniel, it is only fitting that yours should be the first comment on the “new” blog. Thank you for your nice remarks, and for making it easy for me by getting this whole thing well underway!
Derek Williams
This makes perfect sense Philip, and thank you for your ongoing stewardship of this site. One point though: in the comments thread, the Comment field is called ‘Leave a Reply’, which creates confusion with the Reply buttons in the parent and nested threads. I suggest renaming this to ‘Leave a Comment’ so as to distinguish a new thread from a Reply to an existing one.
Philip Rothman
Derek, thank you for your long-standing readership and always-helpful comments. Or should I call them “replies”? :-) I will look into changing this!
Philip Rothman
Derek, just as I was writing this, Joey (the terrific developer mentioned in the post) made that change, so you should see it now. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Tim Parkin
Delighted Philip, took a good look preview yesterday whilst on holiday in the Far East with a number of different mobile devices.
I have a series that I am currently planning whilst I take break, and you will hear from me in due course.
Although I have been a Sib user for many years (with Finale as required for Pro Reasons) I will tell you now that I am heavily focussed on Dorico. My specialist area is Film/TV/Theatre and while Dorico is not ready for commercial use at this stage in general, I am confident (with the DOR development team shall be testing/beta testing this area going forward. I think we probably know exactly focused in this specific area of notation in Dorico.
It is an specific area that I will be looking in detail over the coming months.
Delighted to see that Bob Z is part of the team. His contribution to SIB over the years had been massive and I have no doubt that his value add to further developmnts in any area will be significant going forward.
Apologies for errors, composing this on an iPhone 6 sitting in a bar in Chaing Mai, Northern Thailand.
//Tim
Philip Rothman
Hi Tim, that sounds terrific. Thanks for your remarks. Looking forward to hearing from you further in due course.
Derek Williams
Terrific, thanks Philip! It was more an issue when viewed on the iPhone, where everything other than actual replies, which are indented, appears in similar text.
That said, in this Reply, I am presented with the same issue in reverse, in that when I hit Reply to your Reply, the “Leave a Comment” field came up at the foot of the thread, instead of underneath your Reply. Perhaps that is why it was named the way it was originally. Might there be some way to separate the Comment function from the Reply function? I can send you screenshots of how it looks on my iPhone and in Safari, if it’s behaving differently for you.
I wonder also if the Notification checkboxes for follow-up could be preselected to their previous state for a logged on user.
Derek Williams
PS – my reply just now is also not indented beneath yours.
Derek Williams
oh – and I just realised I didn’t receive email notifications for your replies, even though I did tap the checkboxes.
Peter Roos
Very cool — congratulations Philip! The name change is appropriate, I think — for several years now the blog was more than just about Sibelius, there’s been posts about Finale, and more recently, also Dorico. All this makes perfect sense to me.
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Peter!
Tiago
Congrats Philip!
Makes a lot of sense the new name indeed.
I also like the blog’s new layout.
I learn so much here. Thanks a lot!
Philip Rothman
Thank you, Tiago!
Andrew Pearson
Thanks, I shall continue to read with interest.
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Andrew!
Bill
I’m hoping you’ll bring back the links to Comments at the bottom of the thumbnails on the main page. I often want to go back and read comments in the days after reading an article, and it’s nice to get there quickly.
Philip Rothman
Bill, thanks for being a loyal and long-time reader. Thanks for the feedback. I’m not certain if we’ll bring that back, but I’ll look into it.