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Katie Wardrobe Midnight Music

ASME 2011

Sibelius: Tips for Working Effectively

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Navigation and score view........................................................................................................... 4

Useful score navigation shortcuts .........................................................................................................................................4 Panorama view ..............................................................................................................................................................................4

Best friends ............................................................................................................................. 4

Escape................................................................................................................................................................................................4 Undo ...................................................................................................................................................................................................4

Note entry tips ............................................................................................................................ 5

Better note entry options..........................................................................................................................................................5 Numeric keypad ............................................................................................................................................................................5

Alphabetic and step-‐time entry ................................................................................................... 5

Pictorial guide ................................................................................................................................................................................5 Flexi-‐time entry ........................................................................................................................... 6

Set-‐up .................................................................................................................................................................................................6 Start recording...............................................................................................................................................................................6

Note input with the keyboard or fretboard window (Sibelius 6) .................................................. 6

Visual alternatives........................................................................................................................................................................6 Selecting notes, bars and other objects ....................................................................................... 7

Selecting single notes or other objects................................................................................................................................7 Selecting non-‐contiguous objects (objects not next to one another).....................................................................7 Selecting single bars or multiple bars..................................................................................................................................7 Selecting multiple staves ...........................................................................................................................................................7

Great ways to copy and paste music............................................................................................ 7

“R” for Repeat (great for ostinatos) ......................................................................................................................................7 Best copy and paste method: Alt (Opt.)-‐click ...................................................................................................................7 Multicopy (fill up lots of bars at once).................................................................................................................................7

Overwriting pitches (whilst retaining rhythm) ............................................................................. 8

Re-‐inputing pitches......................................................................................................................................................................8 Filtering....................................................................................................................................... 8

What is filtering?...........................................................................................................................................................................8 What can you do with filtering? .............................................................................................................................................8 Example: filtering lyrics .............................................................................................................................................................8

Quick chord symbols (Sibelius 6 only) .......................................................................................... 9

“Play” the chord symbol.............................................................................................................................................................9 Instant arranging ......................................................................................................................... 9

One-‐click arrangements.............................................................................................................................................................9


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Custom shortcuts ........................................................................................................................ 9

Setting Up Your Own Collection of Shortcuts ...................................................................................................................9 Creating a New Shortcut.........................................................................................................................................................10

Playback tips ..............................................................................................................................11

Quick ways to play your score .............................................................................................................................................11 Plug-‐ins ......................................................................................................................................11

What is a plug-‐in?? ....................................................................................................................................................................11 How to Use a Plug-‐in ................................................................................................................................................................11 Some favourite (education-‐related) plug-‐ins ................................................................................................................11

Tutorial Videos ...........................................................................................................................12

Contact me (I’m happy to answer questions ) .........................................................................12


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Essential Tips

The tips in this session are all designed to make your Sibelius life easier. Adding just one or two of these techniques to your repertoire could dramatically improve the way in which you use Sibelius.

Navigation and score view

Useful score navigation shortcuts

Page Up/Page Down move up or down your score

Home/End move towards the start or the end of your score

Ctrl+Home (⌘Home) jump to the very first page

Ctrl+End (⌘End) jump to the very last page

Ctrl+= (⌘=) zoom in

Ctrl+-‐ (⌘–) zoom out

Panorama view

Sibelius opens a new score in page view, but it’s quicker and easier to work with the score in one long continuous line (known as Panorama view). Switch to Panorama view by doing one of the following:

• press Shift+P

• click on the Panorama button on the Toolbar (to the right of the Zoom dropdown menu)

You can use either method to switch back to page view again.

Best friends

The two most important things in Sibelius:

Escape

Escape is your friend. Press the Escape key (top left hand corner of your computer keyboard) to deselect an object, cancel an action or stop playback. Undo

Undo: press Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on Mac) to undo your last action. Learning to use this shortcut will save you hours of time because it can be used in ANY software program (not just in Sibelius)

Windows

Mac


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Note entry tips

The best thing you can do to improve your Sibelius use is to learn to enter notes into your score without relying on the mouse.

Better note entry options

• Alphabetic Entry (computer keyboard only)

• Step-‐time Entry (MIDI keyboard and computer keyboard)

• Flexitime Entry

Numeric keypad

Note that the numeric keypad on your computer keyboard maps exactly to Sibelius’s on-‐screen Keypad

Alphabetic and step-‐time entry

These two methods use a computer keyboard, or a combination of computer keyboard and MIDI keyboard.

Pictorial guide


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Flexi-‐time entry

Set-‐up

Flexi-‐time allows you to record your playing to a metronome beat. To get the most out of Flexi-‐time, go to Notes > Flexi-‐time Options first and customise the settings. Here are the ones I recommend starting with:

Start recording

• Select the rest in the score where you’d like to start entering notes

• Click on the Record button or type the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F or ⇧⌘F

• A metronome will start straight away, giving you a one-‐bar introduction

• Start playing on your MIDI keyboard and hit Escape (or press the Spacebar) to stop recording

Note input with the keyboard or fretboard window (Sibelius 6)

Visual alternatives

• Open either of these windows by going to Window > Keyboard or Window > Fretboard

• Select a rhythmic value on the Keypad. Your mouse pointer will turn blue

• Select a note pitch by clicking on the Keyboard or the Fretboard

• Press Escape twice when you’re finished


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Selecting notes, bars and other objects

Selecting single notes or other objects

• To select a single note or other object in your score, just click on it. It should turn blue to indicate that it has been selected

Selecting non-‐contiguous objects (objects not next to one another)

• Select the first object and then Ctrl-‐click (Cmd-‐click) on the other object/s

Selecting single bars or multiple bars

• To select a single bar, click inside the bar where there are no notes – on stave line is a good place. You should end up with a blue box around the bar

• To select multiple bars, click in the first bar as above and then shift-‐click in the last bar. The blue

box should extend around all of the bars

Selecting multiple staves

• Click in the first bar of the top stave

• Shift-‐click in the last bar of the bottom stave (diagonally opposite)

Great ways to copy and paste music

“R” for Repeat (great for ostinatos)

• Select a note, bar or group of notes and press R

Best copy and paste method: Alt (Opt.)-‐click

• Select a bar, group of notes or multiple bars

• Hold down Alt (Option on Mac) and click at the beginning of where you’d like the material to appear

Multicopy (fill up lots of bars at once)

• Select a bar of music (or group of bars)

• Press Ctrl+C (⌘C)

• Select all of the destination bars (select the first one and shift-‐click on the last one)

• Press Ctrl+V (⌘V)


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Overwriting pitches (whilst retaining rhythm)

Re-‐inputing pitches

Sometimes you’ll find that two instruments play the same rhythm but with different pitches. Sibelius allows you to overwrite the pitch of notes in a section, whilst maintaining the rhythm by using a feature called Re-‐input pitches.

• Select the first note of the passage you want to overwrite

• Go to Notes > Re-‐input pitches

• A dotted cursor will appear just before the notes and you can type just the note letter names on your computer keyboard (or play them on a MIDI keyboard) to adjust the pitches

Filtering

What is filtering?

Filtering is the act of selecting just one type of object throughout a passage of music. For example:

• Selecting just the lyrics (and not the notes) for the entire soprano line

• Selecting just the dynamics in the Violin I part

• Selecting just the chord symbols in a Piano/Vocal score

What can you do with filtering?

Once you have filtered objects such as lyrics, dynamics or chord symbols, you can do the following:

• Copy and paste them into another part of your score (ie. copy the lyrics from the soprano line into the alto part)

• Move them all simultaneously (ie. change the pitch of notes up or down; shift text objects)

• Delete them

Example: filtering lyrics

• Select a passage of music (at this stage everything in the passage should be blue, including all notes)

• Go to Edit > Filter > Lyrics (the lyrics will remain selected – blue – and everything else will be deselected)

• Hold down Alt (Option on Mac) and click at the beginning of where you’d like the lyrics to appear (ie. under the first note in the Alto part, for instance)


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Quick chord symbols (Sibelius 6 only)

“Play” the chord symbol

Sibelius 6 gives you the option to input chord symbols by playing the chord on your MIDI keyboard. Sibelius will identify the chord you played and fill in the appropriate chord symbol.

• Select the note where you want to start inputting chord symbols

• Press Ctrl+K (⌘K)

• Now you can opt to type in the chord, or play the notes of the chord on your MIDI keyboard

• Press space to move on to the next note

• The tab key allows you to jump to the beginning of the next bar

Instant arranging

One-‐click arrangements

The Arrange feature is an excellent time-‐saving copy and paste method. It allows you to select a passage of music which appears in, say, in a piano part and instantly arrange it for multiple brass parts.

• Select the passage you’d like to arrange

• Press Ctrl+C (⌘C)

• Select the destination bars: click in the first bar of the top instrument (ie. trumpet) and shift-‐click in the first bar of the bottom instrument (ie. tuba)

• Go to Notes > Arrange and choose the family of instruments you are arranging for

• Click OK

Sibelius will automatically “explode” the material across the multiple destination staves.

Custom shortcuts

Setting Up Your Own Collection of Shortcuts

• Go to File > Preferences (or Sibelius > Preferences on a Mac)

• Choose Menus and Shortcuts from the list on the left

• At the top, click on the Add Feature Set button (Sibelius 6) or choose it from the drop-‐down menu (Sibelius 5 and earlier). This “feature set” (set of shortcuts) will become your own personal set of shortcuts


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• Give the feature set a name (I usually use my own name)

• Leave Base on default set checked (this means you will retain all of Sibelius’s current shortcuts)

Creating a New Shortcut

You’ll need to have an idea of where the feature (action) is located in Sibelius in the first place, in order to create a new shortcut for it. I’ll set up a shortcut for adding a Final Barline as an example:

• From the Menu or category list, choose the menu in which your item is located. In this case: Create

• From the Feature list, find the exact item – in this case, Final Barline – and select it

• If a shortcut exists for that item, it will be shown in the Keyboard Shortcuts box. If the box is empty, there is no existing shortcut

• Click on the Add…. button

• A small window opens and whichever keys you press next will become the shortcut for that action. If you happen to choose something that’s already being used as a shortcut, Sibelius will tell you

• Type your chosen key/s and then press OK


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Playback tips

Quick ways to play your score

• Press the spacebar to start or pause playback

• Select a note and press P to start playback from that point in your score

• Select a bar and press P to hear that stave (instrument) on its own

• Ctrl+click (⌘+click) on multiple bars to hear a selection of staves on their own

Plug-‐ins

What is a plug-‐in??

Plug-‐ins automate mundane tasks and therefore make life easier for you . Some of the things you can achieve with plug-‐ins include:

• Automatically adding note names to note heads

• Automatically creating an accompaniment to a melody

• Automatically adding sol-‐fa to a score

• Automatically number repeated bars (ie. in a drum part where the same pattern is played over and over)

Plug-‐ins are also useful for tidying up or editing your score, for example:

• You can “round-‐up” rhythmic values for notes or rest to the nearest crotchet, quaver or other value

• You can respell accidentals throughout your score all at once (ie. change all the A sharps to B flats

How to Use a Plug-‐in

“Running the plug-‐in” simply involves the following:

• Select some music in your score

• Click on the Plug-‐ins menu and choose the appropriate one from a sub-‐menu

• Alter the settings in the window that opens (if necessary)

• Click OK

• If you’re not happy with the results, just undo!

Some favourite (education-‐related) plug-‐ins

• Plug-‐ins > Text > Add note names

• Plug-‐ins > Text > Add tonic solfa

• Plug-‐ins > Text > Add brass fingering

• Plug-‐ins > Text > Add string fingering

• Plug-‐ins > Other > Add note names to noteheads

• Plug-‐ins > Composing tools > Add simple harmony (creates a simple accompaniment to a melody)


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Tutorial Videos

I’ve made a few Sibelius tutorial videos which can be found on Youtube. If you’d like to be informed when new videos are made, you can sign up to my monthly newsletter, or subscribe to the Youtube channel. The videos include:

• Melodic flashcards

• Rhythmic flashcards

• Short worksheet questions (intervals questions)

• Copy and paste to Word

• How to create drum parts

Click on this link to visit my Youtube channel: http://midnightmusic.com.au/youtube

Contact me (I’m happy to answer questions )

Contact me regarding • training enquiries or presentations for your school/network/event

• music technology-‐related questions

Email: [email protected]

Mobile: 0412 403 704

Website: www.midnightmusic.com.au

Facebook: www.facebook.com/midnightmusic

Twitter: www.twitter.com/katiesw1

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