If you happen to have missed some of our news, tips, tutorials, and reviews from the last several months, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with this post with a summary of what’s been happening so that you can take it to the beach.
avid
Free Sibelius First now available; other improvements in 2018.6 release
Today Avid released Sibelius 2018.6, the latest version of its notation software. While the 2018.6 release is mostly geared toward unifying the different Sibelius tiers into one installer and the availability of the free tier for the first time, a few improvements made their way into this release in the areas of note spacing, grace notes, multi-text entry, tied notes, and more.
Graphical MIDI Tools plug-in brings sequencer-like capabilities to Sibelius
Graphical MIDI Tools (GMT) is a Sibelius plug-in by Santiago Barx that cleverly and ingeniously takes full advantage of Sibelius’s extended features such as colored objects, custom text, hidden MIDI messages, and more. It uses those features to superimpose a temporary sequencer-like frame on any given selection, and then gives the user the ability to draw in automations to manipulate the data in a way never before seen in a Sibelius tool. Moreover, there are additional windows to adjust velocity and note duration in piano roll-like fashion.
Sibelius 2018.5 released with one fix pertaining to plug-ins
Avid today released Sibelius 2018.5 to fix an issue in Sibelius where running some plug-ins would cause a memory leak that slowed Sibelius down until you restarted it. This most notably affected the Dolet MusicXML export plug-in, and only on Windows, not on Mac.
Sibelius 2018.4.1 released with bug fixes
Today Avid released Sibelius 2018.4.1, a maintenance release to the substantial 2018.4 release from earlier this month. A few bugs hitched their way along for the ride on that release, and those have now been fixed in the latest update.
Sibelius 2018.4 released with multi-edits for text, better note spacing, much more; re-brands as “Ultimate”
Today Avid released Sibelius 2018.4, a broad release with many new features and some longstanding requests addressed. Areas of improvement include multi-edits for text, a new note spacing rule affecting multiple voices and other cases, deleting and adding bars at the beginning of the score, smarter ties, and many more other enhancements. Avid also announced a new naming strategy where the pro-level version is now called “Sibelius Ultimate”.
Avid fires CEO Louis Hernandez for misconduct; appoints Jeff Rosica as replacement
Avid announced its board of directors has terminated the employment of Louis Hernandez, Jr., former chief executive officer, effective immediately, “due to violations of Company policies related to workplace conduct.” Jeff Rosica has been appointed chief executive officer.
Cloud sharing for Sibelius scores with multiple copies
Cloud Sharing (in Sibelius 8.7 and later) identifies a score using a hidden file ID that is created when a score is saved or exported in Sibelius. It is important to understand that if you make a copy of a score outside of Sibelius, the file ID will not change. Bob Zawalich discusses where multiple variant copies of a score are generated from a single score, and how to use Cloud Sharing with such a score.
NAMM 2018: The Sibelius 2018.1 release is smarter with multi-edit workflow improvements
With its release coinciding with the opening of the 2018 NAMM Show, Sibelius 2018.1, the latest update to Sibelius, brings broad improvements to how users perform common tasks in Sibelius like placing slurs, hairpins, other lines, ties, special barlines, and a new note editing feature.
Headed to NAMM 2018
The 2018 NAMM Show will take place from Thursday, January 25 through Sunday, January 28, 2018, at the Anaheim Convention Center. We’ll have blog coverage from the show; here’s what to expect.