Sibelius Question & Answer Thread

[c#minor]

Basically I need help with figuring this program out. If anyone else has questions like me ask them.


Alright i have quite few questions but ill keep them to one at a time.


When you are playing a MIDI instrument is there any way to turn the metronome on to keep time?

[karlhenning]

When you are playing a MIDI instrument is there any way to turn the metronome on to keep time?

Dunno; I don't play MIDI instruments.

I made good progress with Sibelius in doing up The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword.  Now, to turn to an orchestral score . . . .

Will read the handbook again, first.  A little experience with the program hands-on, has made the manual read entirely different, somehow.

[karlhenning]

Luke!  How does one handle the two following (admittedly commonplace) practices:

1. A percussion staff which must include different noisemakers (by turns serially, and simultaneously).

2. A (f'r instance) cello solo line peeling away from the section (including, how is this cooridnated with the part?)

Thanks!

[lukeottevanger]

Luke!  How does one handle the two following (admittedly commonplace) practices:

1. A percussion staff which must include different noisemakers (by turns serially, and simultaneously).

There must be a better way than mine, I'll say that before I even begin. This is a big problem, but I've never properly looked into ways of solving it, so I can't blame Sibelius 100%.  My solution is usually a combination of:

1) Choosing 'percussion - 5 lines' from the instrument list and if possible letting the Sibelius defaults for this stave take the strain (IOW, if a notehead on the second line produces the sound I want it to, then that's fine). However, usually this won't work, so

2) I usually prepare one score for printing and one for MIDI. The print one comes first, then I create a MIDI score in which each percussion instrument has its own stave. Then it's simple to copy+paste the multi-percussion stave into each percussion stave and delete the bits which aren't relevant. It doesn't take that long to do, actually.

But as I say, there's probably a much better solution than this which I've never looked into finding.

2. A (f'r instance) cello solo line peeling away from the section (including, how is this cooridnated with the part?)

This would depend very much on how you wanted the score and the part to look - separate stave for the solo part? Could you describe a little more? I'm better at score layout than at part layout, which is something I've not had to do much of so far, but I'd imagine that this sort of thing won't be coordinated automatically when one extracts parts - you'll have to do it manually.

[karlhenning]

Thanks, Luke; I need to do a little more investigating myself.

Percussion-wise:  What I would do in Finale was tweak the percussion map on a five-line staff, sounds much like your tack . . . I remember needing to do that more or less at the outset of 'building' the document.

Split-staves:  In leafing through the Sibelius 5 Handbook, I get the impression that it is possible to . . .

Wait; here's what wants doing:

Separate line for a solo cello for say ten measures, while altri continue playing their accompaniment.  So in the score, that will be a distinct staff for a page (say), but it's got to be on the page of the cello part.

The Handbook (which is just a 150-page affair) has 40-odd pages devoted to How To, but these are just sample score pages with captions referencing chapters in the on-line reference (thus, not so very informative when I'm reading the Handbook on the train last night  )

Looks like it ought to be workable, but I need to check the on-line reference . . . .

[lukeottevanger]

Thanks, Luke; I need to do a little more investigating myself.

Percussion-wise:  What I would do in Finale was tweak the percussion map on a five-line staff, sounds much like your tack . . . I remember needing to do that more or less at the outset of 'building' the document.

Split-staves:  In leafing through the Sibelius 5 Handbook, I get the impression that it is possible to . . .

Wait; here's what wants doing:

Separate line for a solo cello for say ten measures, while altri continue playing their accompaniment.  So in the score, that will be a distinct staff for a page (say), but it's got to be on the page of the cello part.

The Handbook (which is just a 150-page affair) has 40-odd pages devoted to How To, but these are just sample score pages with captions referencing chapters in the on-line reference (thus, not so very informative when I'm reading the Handbook on the train last night  )

Looks like it ought to be workable, but I need to check the on-line reference . . . .

When I've needed to create a separate solo cello/violin/whatever part, as on the 'Largo' I wrote in 1992 that's recently been on my thread and which I set into Sibelius a few days ago, I simply create it as a separate, distinct cello part at the beginning of the process (you could do it later, of course) and hide it until it's required, hiding it again after it's finished with. You could do the same process in making the part - it doesn't take long.

[karlhenning]

Many thanks;  it is exactly that sort of experienced expertise which is such an enormous help!

[karlhenning]

2. A (f'r instance) cello solo line peeling away from the section (including, how is this coordinated with the part?)

Wow, but this does look like it works very easily in Sibelius, Luke.

Now if only I can find some percussion-mapping guidance . . . .

[karlhenning]

Percussion . . . okay, looks much as it did in Finale.  So now my rough question is about, say, a percussion I part in which the player will switch from a single-line staff triangle to a grand-staff vibraphone.  But I think that the line opened up by the cello solution may serve here, as well.

I think it's time to go back to Sibelius itself . . . .

[lukeottevanger]

Percussion . . . okay, looks much as it did in Finale.  So now my rough question is about, say, a percussion I part in which the player will switch from a single-line staff triangle to a grand-staff vibraphone.  But I think that the line opened up by the cello solution may serve here, as well.

I think it's time to go back to Sibelius itself . . . .

No, if you're asking about layout here, rather than MIDI playback, that's an easy one.

Right-click
-> Other
-> Staff type change
-> percussion (or whatver is appropriate)
-> choose from drop-down menu (actually, as instruments are specified here this may have positive MIDI implications too, I wouldn't know as I've never used it)

Click where you want the change and hey presto. If you're viewing hidden objects you will see a small rectangle appear where the change occurs - you can drag this or use arrow keys to change the position of the change.

The last pages of the E+A score just posted do this a lot, switching back and forth between 'hidden' and 'five lines no key signature'

[lukeottevanger]

To fine tune my response - I'd have a grand staff vibraphone as the stave you choose initially here, so that it's always 'there' even if you hide or change one or both of its staves as you go. But that's not entirely necessary (see my score to the Rhythm Study I wrote when I was 15 or whatever, a few pages back on my thread - it switches between 2 and 4 staves, but is basically a 4 stave score with 2 of them hidden most of the time)

[karlhenning]

Thanks!  Will report.

[karlhenning]

Apart from my getting a different set of options when I right-click on a staff, Luke . . . the percussion alterations are quite easy.

I am enjoying Sibelius a great deal!

[lukeottevanger]

Apart from my getting a different set of options when I right-click on a staff, Luke . . . the percussion alterations are quite easy.

Hmm - th different options are maybe because you're running a different version. Or perhaps because you're clicking on the staff, whereas I was referring to clicking in empty space. But both get you to the same place.

I am enjoying Sibelius a great deal!

Pleased to hear it! It gets to be intuitive, doesn't it, so that the biggest problem in trying to give advice is to reconstruct what one would do automatically and unthinkingly in the same situation.

[karlhenning]

How does one selectively hide staves, page by page? I have a feeling this must be easy, but I'm not doing it.

[lukeottevanger]

How does one selectively hide staves, page by page? I have a feeling this must be easy, but I'm not doing it.

Hide as opposed to change the stave properties so that it's present but invisible (as at the end of Ascent)?

To get rid of unused staves, so that each system only contains staves that are being used, select the area of the score you want to apply it to and then go to 'Hide empty staves' in the layout section. Once they're hidden you can get them back by reversing the process, or by forcing them to appear by other means.

If an empty stave doesn't disappear when you expect it to, it's usually the case that something small - say a dynamic marking - that belongs to another stave has mistakenly attached itself to the empty one, so that Sibelius doesn't see it as empty after all. To check this, highlight the stave in question and examine if there's any indication of stray attached objects.

[karlhenning]

Thanks!

[karlhenning]

Have yet to try out the staff-hiding advice.

Meanwhile . . .

Near the beginning of the Overture, I have a fermata over a ingle measure's rest, which I want to last five-ish measures' duration.  Suggestions on how to get playback to reflect that?

TIA!

[Szykneij]

I've taken a few Sibelius workshops so I've gotten on their mailing list. I just got an e-mail soliciting names for their newsletter. I'm sure they'd be happy to sign up anyone who's interested.

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[karlhenning]

I get that in the in-box, too.