The Scoring Express Theatre & Studio templates for Sibelius Ultimate are optimized for the demanding situations of theatrical, show, and studio use, when time is at a premium and everything needs to be presented as clearly as possible.
score preparation
Preparing music scores for screens — the challenges and opportunities
What are the best practices when preparing a score with the expectation that it will be read from a screen, not paper? This is an excellent question — one whose answer today may likely change in the coming years.
Notes to Notes, a real-world guide for the professional music creator
Tristan Noon’s e-book Notes to Notes: The Ultimate Guide to Business in Film & TV Music is a comprehensive and approachable guide to the music business, conveyed from the perspective of real-world experience.
DJA’s Notes: Music preparation basics
In this installment of DJA’s Notes by Darcy James Argue, we learn the basics of well-prepared lead sheets, scores, and parts from a jazz/big band perspective — so that you can communicate musical intent in the most clear, familiar, and unambiguous manner.
Dorico 3 feature: Condensing
The first in our series exploring the major new features in Dorico 3, condensing is the process of combining the parts of multiple players on a single staff. This is a crucial step in the preparation of usable conductor’s scores because it helps save precious vertical space and improve legibility.
Format text in the Edit Instrument Names plug-in for Sibelius
The Edit Instrument Names plug-in for Sibelius can now handle various formatting conventions and apply preset formatting patterns to names, and you can multiselect instruments and apply formatting to all selected instruments at once.
Condensing scores in Dorico
It’s common to have a conductor’s score with winds and brass on shared staves, and individual parts for players. Although Dorico does not yet offer an automatic solution to creating both, it is relatively easy to achieve satisfactory results using its powerful layout features.
MuseScore 2.3 released with new extension facility, other improvements
Today MuseScore announced the release of MuseScore 2.3, featuring the brand new MuseScore Extension facility to allow additional packages of features to be easily delivered and installed without the need to update the program. These extensions can include new instruments and sounds as well as new palettes and other enhancements. In conjunction with MuseScore 2.3, MuseScore is releasing the first such extension, MuseScore Drumline.
DJA’s Notes: Do not abuse one-bar and two-bar repeats
In this installment of DJA’s Notes by Darcy James Argue, we learn the dos and donts of one- and two-bar repeats, numbering repeated bars, and how to lay out the music correctly so that the intent is clearly conveyed.
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.