The Create Trailing Pseudo-Grace Notes plug-in for Sibelius is hot off the presses and sports a cool name, besides. Its origins stem from a detailed method I recently shared for creating grace notes at the end of a bar using tuplets, as a workaround for Sibelius’s limitations in that area. The process involves multiple steps and a fair amount of math, but achieves solid results in the end.
Always up for a challenge — and without any pressure from me, I might add — Sibelius maven Bob Zawalich endeavored to automate the process in the form of a plug-in. In just a few days, his creation was ready, and now Create Trailing Pseudo-Grace Notes is available to all Sibelius users via File > Plug-ins > Install Plug-ins, in the Notes and Rests category, making the whole process so much easier.
Head on over to that earlier post if you want to understand the concept. Let’s consider our example again, from Bizet’s Carmen:
To prepare to use Create Trailing Pseudo-Grace Notes, first, enter the “main” note, i.e., the note containing the full value of the beat. In this example, it’s a quarter note.
Then, with the note selected, run the plug-in. To create the grace notes in the Carmen example, I want 6 grace notes with a value of 32nd notes:
The plug-in creates the trailing pseudo-grace notes using the tuplet method, on the same pitch as the main note.
The first new note will be selected, so you can use Note Input > Note Input > Re-input Pitches to easily change the pitches. Et voilà!
Not content to stop there, Bob has added some additional support for using different notehead sizes, should you wish to fine-tune your results. Click on Note sizing information… in the plug-in to read more:
Thanks, Bob, for making our work a little better today and for all of the countless other times, you’ve done so over the years. (And thanks for dedicating the plug-in to me: a real honor!)
Download the Create Trailing Pseudo-Grace Notes plug-in for Sibelius from File > Plug-ins > Install Plug-ins, in the Notes and Rests category.
This is SO great! Thank you both Philip and Bob for all your hard work, it will most certainly be put to good use many times I’m sure…
Enjoy, Simon — thanks!
Philip and Bob,
This is super stuff! Love it when great people with great ideas collaborate :)
Me too!
I positively love this plugin, and I would just add one little suggestion: I always want to flip the trailing pseudo grace notes to look more like real grace notes. Could this be automated into the plugin? Otherwise, thank you for an outstanding addition to the plugin family!