One of the great things about the vibrant and passionate user community that surrounds Sibelius is that professionals are willing to share their expertise and insight with the rest of us, and often for free. I want to draw your attention to two sites run by expert Sibelius users, who also happen to be expert Finale users as well. For folks who have to use both applications, or who are considering making the switch, you may find the information provided invaluable.
First up is my friend John Hinchey from Nashville, whose great advice I have featured on the blog before. His site, Notes on Notes, is building up a great library of tips and tutorials for Sibelius. Just recently, for example, he’s posted the following:
- Playing an MP3 (or WAV or AIFF) in Sibelius
- Advanced filter tips, part 1 and part 2
- How to keep PDF files of extracted parts in order
Subscribe to John’s blog or his mailing list to keep up-to-date with the great tutorials he’s sharing.
The second site I want to recommend to you is Seattle-based arranger, copyist and notation software expert Robert Puff’s new blog, Of Note. The emphasis of Robert’s blog is to provide short tutorials and tips for performing specific operations in both Finale and Sibelius. Sometimes the comparison between how similar things are achieved in the two applications is quite striking (as in this post concerning creating tremolos, a basic notation that requires a plug-in and a multi-step process in Finale, and just one click in Sibelius), but there are lots of Sibelius-specific gems available already, including:
- Using large or huge time signatures
- Creating custom trill lines with accidentals
- Controlling the visibility of bar rests in the full score and dynamic parts
and more besides. Subscribe to Robert’s blog to be sure you never miss a trick!
Do you know of any other great blogs from Sibelius users that I should share with the world? Leave a comment or drop me an email to let me know.
Tom
Hi there,
I read the post of John Hinchey about the order of pdf-files.
Recently I’m using Sibelius 7 and I hoped this would be default in this pdf extract. Not :-(
Another missing thing in the PDF-export in Sibelius 7 is the use of the ‘meta information’ in the PDF-file. Why not put the ‘score title’ in the metadata of the pdf-file? And also the composer/arranger in the ‘author’ field?
These options would make Sibelius 7 pdf export a real good function!
James
Thanks for the great links/resources. Bookmarked and shared!