Two Sibelius plug-ins: Merge To Voice 1 and Simplify Part Names

The prolific Bob Zawalich has created two new plug-ins that were released earlier this month. Grab ’em while they’re fresh!

The first of these, Merge to Voice 1, converts notes in all voices in a selection into voice 1. You may think, what’s wrong with just typing option (Alt)+1 (or clicking the blue 1 on the Keypad layout) to do this? Nothing, really, except it requires a few extra steps, which the plug-in automates.

Take this simple example:

Simply typing option (Alt)+1 will result in:

The result from using Merge to Voice 1 (to which I’ve assigned the shortcut control+option+1 on Mac), however, is:

You can see that rests have been automatically filtered and deleted, and duplicate slurs and text have been removed.

It should be noted that if your passage has tuplets, the tuplets will not be merged, and slurs and text that start in the range of a tuplet will not be merged.

If your passage has a lot of tuplets, you might try Kenneth Gaw’s Move or copy to another voice, which was covered in an earlier blog post. Move or copy to another voice can achieve similar results to Merge to Voice 1, but each plug-in is designed differently. Why not try both and see which best suits your needs?

Merge to Voice 1 may be downloaded directly through Sibelius 7 at File > Plug-ins > Install Plug-ins > Notes and Rests. Users may also install it manually in Sibelius 6 or 7 by visiting the plug-in download page and following the usual manual installation procedure.

The second new plug-in, Simplify Part Names, removes all but the first instrument name in the Part Name field in Score Info for each dynamic part in each processed score. This removes any additional instrument names which could be produced by instrument changes.

This is especially handy if you are dealing with, say, a show orchestra with several wind players doubling on multiple instruments, quickly turning this:

Into this:

Of course, these changes are reflected in each part, assuming you use the standard wildcards for instrument names that Sibelius typically creates by default.

Simplify Part Names may be downloaded directly through Sibelius 7 at File > Plug-ins > Install Plug-ins > Text. Users may also install it manually in Sibelius 6 or 7 by visiting the plug-in download page and following the usual manual installation procedure.

It’s also worth noting that a couple of other plug-ins have been recently updated: Transpose Copies and Tin Whistle Fingering. Be sure to keep on top of which plug-ins have been newly added or updated by looking at the right-hand column of every page of this blog under “Latest plug-in updates”.