Triplets on single-note tremolos in Sibelius

The most recent update to Sibelius brought with it the ability to play back triplets with tremolos:

 

 

Prior to Sibelius 2025.4, these would have just played back as regular 2-note tremolos.

This is nice, you say, but how does one actually create these tremolos in the first place? A fair question, to which the answer is not totally obvious.

Apply single-note triplets for tremolo use

Here’s our example once again (the second bar of the excerpt):

Let’s start by reminding ourselves that the single stroke is essentially another beam, so in this example, the underlying value is a 16th note. For the triplets, we want three 16th notes in the space of two ordinary 16th notes.

So, begin create a 16th note and type Command/Ctrl+3, or click Note Input > Triplets to make it into a triplet in the usual manner:

So far, so good. Now, let’s turn that 16th note into a dotted eighth note to represent the three 16th notes in the triplet:

Huh. What happened to our “3”? It’s definitely a triplet; look at the remaining rest values.

Let’s make a passage selection by Shift-clicking on the note and visit the trusty Inspector (Command/Ctrl+Shift+I). Shall we change Auto bracket to Bracket to see what happens?

Oh, that is gruesome!

Don’t fear; with a little wrangling into shape, maybe hitting X to flip the bracket, and, finally, turning off Bracket once more, we get an acceptable result:

From here, the R key for repeat is your friend — though, be sure to make the passage selection, as above, instead of just selecting the notehead, to be sure that the tuplet settings carry over. (Wondering what the other letters do?)

Note Input > Re-input Pitches (Command/Ctrl+Shift+N) to input the correct notes:

And, of course apply the tremolo via the Keypad:

You may also need to connect beams via the Keypad. You’ll also want to keep in mind that if you ever apply Reset Position to a passage containing these notes, you’ll lose any positioning adjustments made.

Apply single-note triplets for tremolo use (modern notation)

Ah… but you, as a loyal Scoring Notes reader, know all too well that we like to “go with Gould”. Sure enough, dear Elaine, on page 220 of her music notation reference Behind Bars, says, “Traditionally, note-values were converted into compound time by adding
durations dots, [but] it is now standard practice to notate the actual value of the initial note, to avoid confusion over duration.”

Bummer! OK, we are not deterred. For our next trick, we will make use of hidden notes that will be heard but not seen. We still want accurate playback, so, let’s first head over to Play > Interpretation > Performance, and, in Hidden Items, switch on Play back hidden notes.

However, we don’t want the hidden notes to affect music spacing, so, in Preferences > Note Input > Editing, switch off Respace includes hidden notes and rests.

With that done, let’s proceed.

We begin, as before, by creating a 16th note and type Command/Ctrl+3, or click Note Input > Triplets to make it into a triplet in the usual manner:

This time, however, we’ll turn this into a rhythm of 8th-16th:

Hide the 16th note by Command/Ctrl+Shift+H or Home > Edit > Hide or Show:

And let’s go ahead now and place our tremolo stroke and position the tuplet numeral how we like it.

Make the passage selection containing both the visible and hidden notes, and type R to repeat:

In this particular example, we’ll need to make some beam adjustments, which can cause a few funky things to happen to the tuplet numeral, which we’ll adjust accordingly:

Finally, re-input pitches, some final tuplet adjustments, and, switch off View > Hidden Objects to admire our handywork:

The final result:

Either version will play back correctly in Sibelius 2025.4.

 

 

Are you all tupleted out? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.