Gaps before codas for score and parts in Sibelius
“I would like to add a gap between bars for a Coda in my score and parts in Sibelius, but the gap is only showing up in the parts. How…
Real – time recording of continuous control changes in Sibelius
UPDATED FEBRUARY 2, 2012 I recently had this question posed to me by fellow note-slinger John Hinchey, “Is there a way to overdub continuous control changes in Sibelius? Say you’ve…
Show bar rests for score and parts differently in Sibelius
Q: The conductor I am working with does not want bar rests in the conductor’s orchestral score, so I have Show Bar Rests turned off. However, when I go into…
Character styles and text styles in Sibelius 7
Q: I’m working on a piece in Sibelius 7 with a number of metronome marks. I’m not sure what I did, but I now find they all read (e.g.) q.…
Expanded graphics import and export in Sibelius 7
Sibelius 6 can import graphics files in TIFF format. To import, choose Create>Graphics and select a TIFF file. Once the graphic is on the page, the size can be scaled…
Create & position a larger time signature on the staff in Sibelius 6 & 7
Q: I’ve made my regular time signatures a bit larger than the default size, but I can’t seem to get them vertically aligned properly on the staff … How do…
Finale & Sibelius – controlling text visibility between score & parts
In observing the steps people go through to change visibility of text between score and parts in both Finale and Sibelius, I thought a short tutorial post on the subject…
Sibelius – how to type in harp pedal markings as text
Q: “In Sibelius, I have notated the starting and ending notes of a gliss which is in C minor. I tried the Add Harp Pedal Diagrams plugin, but since I’m…
Creating a new score from transposed parts in Finale or Sibelius
Q: I’ve got a chart with just the parts and I’m re-constructing a score. I want to enter the notes as they are without going through transposing. Is there a…
Halving or doubling rhythmic values in Sibelius & Finale
Q: A student of mine has created a .MID file and imported it into Finale 2011. However, all the note values are twice the length she desires. How can she make…
Take control of multirests in Sibelius and Finale
Let’s talk about rests. Multimeasure Rests, that is. You may not have given them much thought, but Multimeasure Rests play a key role in how your parts look. In this…
Meter re-mapping: Merge two measures to create a larger one in Sibelius
Q: I would like to reconfigure some meters which are already in place in Sibelius 7. Rather than having a 2/4 bar followed by a 3/8 bar, I would like…
Easy automated arpeggios in Sibelius 6 & 7
In Sibelius 5 and earlier, the way you would indicate an arpeggio or rolled chord was to Type “L” to open the Lines Dialog and select the appropriate wavy line.…
Take advantage of a modern “swindle” : Dynamic parts in Sibelius
It baffles me that there are still a number of commercial Music Copying Houses in LA, New York and elsewhere that are still not taking advantage of the benefits of…
How to restore missing barlines in one staff of a score in Sibelius
Q: I somehow deleted all of the barlines on one of the staves of my Sibelius score, and can’t figure out how to restore them. How did the barlines on…
Creating fractions & other symbols in Finale & Sibelius using Unicode
U·ni·code noun /ˈyo͞oniˌkōd/ An international encoding standard for use with different languages and scripts, by which each letter, digit, or symbol is assigned a unique numeric value that applies across…
Sibelius : Special barlines, multirests & default double barlines
Q: I have a Sibelius file which is a series of different Effects for strings. I have separated each of these effects with a double barline. However, in any parts…
Incorporate a time signature into a line of text in Sibelius
Q: My question is about tempo changes. I’m copying handwritten parts to Sibelius so musicians can easily read what’s written, and there is a tempo change that states, among other…
Correctly defining an instrument’s glissando playback defaults in Sibelius
Q: How do I get glisses in Sibelius 7 to automatically respond correctly by instrument type? Even though the Inspector is set to the default ‘auto’, for wind instruments, it…
Starting glissando playback later in Sibelius
Q: Sibelius gliss lines always start playing from the beginning of the note they are attached to. Using the desired (and typical jazz) notation style, how do I get a gliss…
Sibelius – create etude numbers using instrument changes
Etude numbers in published works commonly appear at the left edge of the first staff of each etude: Since these occur in the same place as Instrument Names might in…
Sibelius word menus
A useful, but often overlooked feature of Sibelius are Word Menus. Word Menus are built-in lists of useful words: terms, musical symbol text etc, available via contextual menu or keyboard shortcuts…
Grand Pause ( G.P. ) text in Sibelius – symbols method
Q: I’m trying to figure out a better mousetrap for dealing with Grand Pauses (GP) in Sibelius. When I use tempo text to create a grand pause in the score,…
Center Grand Pause (G.P. & other text) in Sibelius – lines method
Sometimes, such as when displaying “G.P.” text in an empty bar of score, it is desirable to be able to center the text between the barlines. While Sibelius doesn’t explicitly…
Understanding & improving music spacing in Finale and Sibelius
Note spacing on the computer is basically achieved by a mathematical formula. But music spacing is more than just notes – at any point in time, it’s a complex pairing…
On location : Finale & Sibelius rehearsal marks
“From the top ?” . . . Image source : “The Art of Music Engraving and Processing” by Ted Ross “Thanks for the great rehearsal marks!” isn’t the type of…
On location : Number repeated measures in Finale & Sibelius
When the same bar of music is repeated over and over, it’s common to indicate the the repeated pattern in subsequent bars using a single bar repeat sign, notated with…
Keep it together in Finale or Sibelius : Score & parts in the same file
In the early days of Finale and Sibelius, individual parts were generated from a master score via a painful and aptly named process referred to as “Extraction”. The programs would…
Create a divisi or chorded instrument from two separate staves
In my post “Keep it Together in Finale or Sibelius : Score & Parts in the same file“, we looked at methods of exploding chorded or divisi parts in the…
Articulation alternatives for staggered bowing in Finale and Sibelius
Bowings are a type of symbol used in music notation to indicate the use of the bow in string parts, which indicate the manner in which a note should be…
Create custom repeat dots on 2 line staves in Sibelius 7 or Sibelius 6
Q: In Sibelius (v.6 and now v.7) with a “Percussion ” instrument, I want to make repeat signs that appear in between the two lines. My two alternatives so far,…
Control multirest break points in Sibelius
Q: I’m trying to import a graphic onto my score, but whenever I place it where I want it, the multi-measure rest breaks in a way I don’t want it…
Centered dynamics between staves on braced grand staff instruments
Q: I can never get the placement of dynamics to align nicely to the middle of the grand staff in piano parts. Because they are connected to the treble or…
West meets east – notation & playback of quarter tone music using Sibelius
As a composer and teacher, I often have the chance to explore areas of music and musical notation with which I am unfamiliar. A few years ago one of my…
Bar number flexibility for score & parts in Finale & Sibelius
In both Finale and Sibelius, one simple and common way to separately control bar number size, location and frequency is to save off a separate copy of the final score…
Clean up MIDI import for drums and percussion in Sibelius
Have you ever wondered why sometimes when importing a MIDI file containing drums or percussion, the resulting notation looks like garbage in Sibelius, while other times, the drum tracks import…
Page numbering in Finale & Sibelius : Ranges : X of Y
This tutorial was updated 9/26/12. Question: A client wants the page numbering to read, page 2 of 7, page 3 of 7, etc., for pdf downloads of some piano pieces…
Create white space where text & barlines intersect in Finale & Sibelius
Question: I’m trying to create dynamic markings or other text over bar lines between staves. In the example above, the organ registration text appears “in front” of the bar line. The…
Realization reversed : From performance to the page
Western music notation is a fixed set of rules devised for expressing something that, by nature, is not fixed. Our current notation system has been culled and pruned over the last several centuries from…
Expressive rubato to massive grooves : Ensemble playback that sings & swings
Subtle differences in the timing, volume and duration of phrases are what gives music its “feel” – to inject more tension or weight; to make it more emotional and exciting.…
Instrument change text & other specialty purpose text styles in Sibelius
Q: I would like to convert all Instrument Change text to Boxed Text in a finished score in Sibelius 7. This would be useful in percussion parts where the player changes…
Installing plug-ins in Sibelius
Q: I spent far too long today trying to install a Sibelius plug-in after I downloaded it. I followed the Sibelius site instructions, but it still didn’t work. I’m using…
Controlling symbols, hooks & dashed extension lines in Sibelius & Finale
Q: I am currently studying Elaine Gould’s “Behind Bars” and on page 30 she states: “Terminate the octave transposition with a corner”. In Finale, octave lines seem to automatically end with…
Controlling layout with auto & manual breaks in Sibelius
Q: What I want to achieve is control over the number of bars per line as a general rule in Sibelius (4 per line, as in the jazz chart style),…
Sibelius gap before bar – a positive feature with negative offsets
Q: I have a very strange Sibelius error that I can’t fix. The piece I am working on shows brackets in the middle of a system that I cannot delete…
How to do what JW rhythm and meter (plugin) does in Sibelius
After reading Robert’s post about the JW Rhythm and Meter plugin for Finale, I decided to figure out what you could do in Sibelius to accomplish the same results… (more…)
Vertical spacing between staves in a score & working @ 100%
Q: What is the ideal space between staves in a score? I know this can vary but I would like to make the systems as big as possible without too much…
Create true equidistant measure widths in a Sibelius score
Q: I am currently engraving an orchestral score by a living composer in Sibelius 7.1.3 and he is asking me for evenly spaced measures in the score (regardless of note…
Sibelius : 6 Of 1 ; ½ dozen of the other – the respell remote key sigs conundrum
When working with scores in keys of four sharps or more, it’s frequently desirable for transposing instruments such as Bb Clarinet or Trumpet to show their respective transpositions in flat…
Make a new instrument or text style available to all your scores in Sibelius
In Sibelius, new text styles, line styles, symbols, noteheads, and instruments are available only in the score in which they are first defined. This gives you the flexibility to make…
Sibelius quick tip : Change the number of staves per page
In every score, Sibelius allows a specific number of staves to show on each page. Sibelius formats page one with the first stave lower than all subsequent pages by default,…
Create a tuplet of any ratio in Sibelius
Q: How can I get Sibelius to create 16th septuplets in a bar of 6/8 without the duration dots? A: It’s a great question. By default, if you select a 16th note or rest on the…
Sibelius quick tip to widen or squash note spacing
Q: I’m writing a piece with semi-quaver runs full of accidentals. The finished score shows the note heads crammed together with the accidentals and it’s not readable. The bar won’t…
How Sibelius plugins store their settings for user data
Some Sibelius plugins (for example, Respell Sharps as Flats) run without taking any input from a user. They do not display a dialog, but just run and do what they…
Sibelius plug-ins
What are plugins and how do I run them? In Sibelius, plug-ins are extra features created using a programming language called ManuScript. Sibelius ships with about 150 plug-ins. These…
Eliminating duplicate plugins in Sibelius
If you have multiple copies of a plugin in different locations (typically a downloadable plugin you have forgotten about installing, and so you installed it again to a different location),…
Plug-ins that run other plug-ins in Sibelius
Since Sibelius version 1, plug-ins have been able to run other plug-ins. For example, the Proof-read plug-in is just a container that lets you call the main Run() method of…
Working Sets, My Plugins, and Curated plug-ins in Sibelius
There are about 650 published Sibelius plug-ins, of which 150 ship with Sibelius. A lot of people never use plug-ins. They can’t find them, or can’t install downloadable plug-ins, or…
Curated plug-in sets: Installing the first plug-in
A Curated Plug-in Set is a collection of Sibelius plug-ins that can be installed at one time and run from a single location. These sets are described in the Of…
Faking special stems in Sibelius
While working on a recent project I was faced with the challenge of recreating two varieties of custom stems. While Sibelius does offer a set of custom stems as symbols,…
Instrument group names in Sibelius
…a tutorial for creating custom instrument group names in Finale is here. There are some situations where you might need to show an additional label for a group of instruments in a score; to…
Sibelius : Copy music with alternating meters into a new location of your score
Q: I am working on a piece with a lot of meter changes. I don’t know how I can repeat or make copies of those changes. There is a 4…
String numbers for notes on notation staves in Sibelius
Some educational materials color or mark the strings on which notes appear for a stringed instrument. This document describes how string numbering can be used with plugins in Sibelius scores.…
Adding ties to chords of different durations in Sibelius
Q: When I input a chord (say, C-E-G) and then hit enter to tie it to the next chord, it USUALLY works fine. The big exception is when I enter…
Rehearsal marks in Sibelius
In Sibelius, it’s easy to change the rehearsal mark format from letters to numbers or to bar numbers. And, with either rehearsal letters or numbers, you can also create individual…
Controlling page number visibility in Sibelius
Q: Can I delete or hide the page numbers Sibelius creates by default? A: Page numbers in Sibelius are a special type of Text Style which cannot be selected directly. As such,…
How to create colored barlines in Sibelius
Q: How can I assign a color to an individual barline? If I try, Sibelius tells me these objects can’t be colored. A: While ordinary barlines can’t be colored, there…
Changing beam groupings in Sibelius
Q: How can I change the default beam grouping in Sibelius? Specifically, I would like to have the 8ths in the time signature 4/4 be displayed in groups of 2…
Appending scores in Sibelius
Q: How can I join several movements of a piece, which I wrote as individual Sibelius scores, together as a single Sibelius document? A: Sibelius provides an “Append” feature, found…
Beyond defaults : Create ½, whole-tone, flat, natural & sharp trill lines in Sibelius
There are a couple of common approaches for indicating trills with specific trill-to pitches in your music score. One way is to indicate the trill-to pitch as a stemless, cue…
Using the select graphic feature of Sibelius for correspondence & desktop publishing
Q: Occasionally when I write to someone I want to include a few music symbols, say, a metronome indication or generic notes and rests to illustrate a rhythm; it’s frustrating…
