Sibelius 5.1

[Tuomas]

Hi there people.

I started thinking a few days ago; sending stuff to the copyright agency is one thing, but as I kind of made some deals with some people about composing optional music for their albums, and have been meddling with midi keyboards, I heard they need them in full scores and playable. Now there are a lot of ways, but Sibelius as a program seems the most acceptable one for commercial use. Or so they told me. i was thinking; having used Sonar 6 this far, and frankly, I can't even use it, it's too complicated, is Sibelius really as good as they say it is, is is it worth the purchase. And if you would know, do I need some range of specific hardware for making it really work on my computer. For writing scores, I'd love to have a good program, all these tabbing programs people give me are horrible at it, and I'm tired of writing with my pen, as all the errors are much harder to fix.

So does anyone have some experiences with this program, and/or different versions of it, and what do you think of it? I know there are quite a few professional musicians here, and some who do it for fun, so I'd really appreciate some advice on this.

Thanks in advance
-Tuomas--

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

If you want it for notation, then it's great.

But I certainly wouldnt pay the silly amount of money they want for it.

I use it for transposing, making quick-'n'-dirty MIDI files for study, editing existing MIDI files, and so on and so forth - purely for study reasons. Some of the sheet music I've had to feed into Sibelius is rather complex, and Sibelius has stuck with me every single step of the way. I heartily reccomend it, heartily.

But again, I wouldn't pay them that ridiculous amount of cash.

[juncmodule]

I have used Sibelius before. It was a very long time ago so I'm not sure which features have been added.

From what I recall this is basically musical notation software and nothing more. While that may not seem like much it is VERY good at what it does. You certainly get a "Professional" feel while using it compared to many freeware or low cost musical notation programs.

Keep in mind though, this is my personal "feeling" while using it. I'm certain that someone would disagree and say that Sonar is just fine. As far as midi keyboard Sibelius is simply a program that receives midi notes and little more. So it should work fine with any midi keyboard, no special hardware required. An excellent midi sound set on your computer would obviously help a great deal. How have you been composing in the past? I get the impression you have not been using a midi keyboard?

If there is a demo available I would recommend you download it and give it a try. 

Oh and I almost forgot, it prints full scores beautifully, so for your purposes it may be worthwhile.

later,
-junc

EDIT: If you are interested in becoming a "professional" then the money is an investment in your career and worth every penny. However, if you are just looking for a better tool for a hobby. Yes, look elsewhere.

[Nikolas]

Tuomas if you are getting paid more than 2000$ or thus, then by all means buy it. If not, no big deal there are alternatives...

First of, I personally, use Finale, not Sibelius. But I know a fair bit about it as well.

Unless you are aiming for rather complicated or perfect scores, then you don't need such a good notation program. For the record I'm still using Finale 2000 (!) with no intention of upgrading, unless the right deal comes... And my scores are professional looking, performed and soon to be (self) published. Deduction: You don't need Sibelius 5.1, you could go for sibelius 2 for your notation needs.

The two rivals are fighting very hard to enter the sequencing arena, and this is where the battle is headed since 2 years now. Both are now VST capable, both can have movies, export audio files, mix, etc. If you are interested in that, then go ahead, but since you have Sonar 6, you don't really need those features do you?

My suggestion would be to try out one of the free products out there (Noteworthy being a semi-free one ($39 the licensed software, with unlimited trial version) and then hit Sibelius (or Finale, or even Notion) through the various stripped down versions, or maybe an educational version?

License in Finale (Makemusic) for educational software IS identical with the commercial one; you can do commercial work with educational versions! Unlike Cubase and many other software.

The other alternative would be to "hire" someone and make your scores quickly, professionally and cheaply. I mean a page could be $30, but if it s a dead simple piece, I can't see anyone taking more than $20. If you have 5 tracks, then... it's $100 and you're done.

Lastly, the "try before you buy" is always there, and I do support the idea, only for this software which has no trail versions, or completely stripped down ones (like... having a piano where the F and B do not play! )

[Tuomas]

Thanks for the quick replies guys

But I certainly wouldnt pay the silly amount of money they want for it.
...
But again, I wouldn't pay them that ridiculous amount of cash.

I see where this is going to

Keep in mind though, this is my personal "feeling" while using it. I'm certain that someone would disagree and say that Sonar is just fine.

As far as midi keyboard Sibelius is simply a program that receives midi notes and little more. So it should work fine with any midi keyboard, no special hardware required. An excellent midi sound set on your computer would obviously help a great deal. How have you been composing in the past? I get the impression you have not been using a midi keyboard?

I'm actually looking for a keyboard too at the moment, my brother has one, and I've used it a couple of times, plus collecting money for one. I'm not really that good with keyboards, but I know someone who's played for 15 years, and basically, I'm trying to write notations, for guitar and piano, the guitar being my nr.1 at the moment. With Sonar 6 the problem is basically not the sounds or the quality, but that I never really learned the bugger, and of course, the samples take almost half of my HD as they always too. So basically yes, a notation program it is that I think I'm looking for. You see, its the way I want my music to be presented if not recorded, to give me freedom of interpretation, which I usually take a lot playing jazz etc.

Unless you are aiming for rather complicated or perfect scores, then you don't need such a good notation program. For the record I'm still using Finale 2000 (!) with no intention of upgrading, unless the right deal comes... And my scores are professional looking, performed and soon to be (self) published. Deduction: You don't need Sibelius 5.1, you could go for sibelius 2 for your notation needs.

Yeah, basically I'm working with people who have what some may consider a classical training while I myself have studied jazz guitar. So i'm going to have to implement my thoughts for people who follow the notes like slaves, and for this, I've found some free notation programs to be too vague, and we've ended up with playing almost completely different songs together.

My suggestion would be to try out one of the free products out there (Noteworthy being a semi-free one ($39 the licensed software, with unlimited trial version) and then hit Sibelius (or Finale, or even Notion) through the various stripped down versions, or maybe an educational version?

Thanks, I'll see if I can find something good enough. The thing i like is the nice looking printable version that Sibelius gives, but I really have no real comparison at the moment.

The other alternative would be to "hire" someone and make your scores quickly, professionally and cheaply. I mean a page could be $30, but if it s a dead simple piece, I can't see anyone taking more than $20. If you have 5 tracks, then... it's $100 and you're done.

Hah, yeah, that's a nice thought. But not really with my financial situation. Also, I like to do it myself, thoroughly.


But basically, having used Sibelius, and then the alternatives, I'm looking to find one with a simple enough interface. I mean, it really shouldn't require a degree in rocket science to write notations. And, I don't like going through 10 sets of options to place one note.

[tube]

You might want to try Rosegarden. I hear it prints pro quality sheet music using an external software called lilypond. It's a Linux application, which might be a hassle for a Windows user. I also hear it compares pretty well to the commercial apps though, so if you've got some space on your hard drive (and a couple of hours) to spare, get something like Ubuntu Studio and try it out anyway before deciding.

[EldKatt]

I don't know for sure about Rosegarden, but LilyPond runs fine under Cygwin, meaning Linux is not necessary. Having used both Finale, Sibelius and LilyPond rather extensively, I can tell you this:

LilyPond far surpasses both Finale and Sibelius from a typographical point of view. It takes into account lots and lots of typographical rules that Finale and Sibelius more or less ignore. Sure, in the hands of a professional music engraver a page produced in one of these commercial applications can look truly awesome, but that's because he or she actually knows these rules, and spends a great amount of time on adjustments. Out-of-the-box, without requiring you to study music typography in-depth, LilyPond is the most successful of the three in just giving you a visually pleasing layout right there.

The downside for most typical users is the fact that LilyPond itself lacks a GUI. All input is done using a markup language (LilyPond is to Finale as TeX is to Microsoft Word). If you're not used to working that way, that's certainly an issue, but it's really rather intuitive and readable, and given some time you can learn to do things as quickly as in any graphical editor. In any case I often find it's worth it: the extra time it can take to input the notes is regained when I process the file and LilyPond simply does what I just told it to do, and it looks good, saving me the hours of tweaking required to make a Finale score look truly publishable. Of course, if you're not that concerned about the quality and just want a rough sketch, you might prefer Finale, but for work that you actually want to look good I can't recommend anything else than LilyPond.

And there's actually a big advantage to using a markup language: Every tweak that you do is right there, you've typed it with your own hands, and you can see it, change it or remove it as you like. If you need to adjust something in Finale or Sibelius, you drag it in this or that direction, you have no idea what the program is doing under the hood, and all sorts of odd things can happen that you have no idea how to avoid. In LilyPond, if something screws up, it's right there in front of you.

The whole markup issue might even be a negligible one if Rosegarden is any good. That I don't know, though. I'm getting my new Windows-free laptop from Zepto Computers. Once I have Linux running I'll try Rosegarden, and can report back if anyone is interested (tell me if you are, or I might not bother).

As for how Finale and Sibelius compare to eachother, it seems largely to be a matter of taste and tradition. I personally find Sibelius rather more musicianly than Finale: the latter often makes mistakes or lacks features that you can hardly imagine an actual musician would not have thought of. But in the end of the day, they can both do much the same things, with similar efficiency (though I'm leaning slightly towards Sibelius in both ease of use and quality of typography).


The bottom line is basically that as a music engraver, LilyPond definitely produces better-looking scores: If I were to prepare a finished piece for publishing, I would without hesitation choose LilyPond. As a music sketchbook or composing tool, Finale or Sibelius have interfaces better suited to that purpose: I've done arranging work entirely in Finale without ever touching a pencil, whereas I can't really imagine doing the same in LilyPond. So it really depends on what you need. The complicating factor is of course that LilyPond and Rosegarden are free (in every sense of the word), whereas Finale and Sibelius are crazy expensive for an ordinary person. And my final verdict is really suspended until I get my hands on Rosegarden, I'm afraid.

Hope you can gain some useful information from this.


Edit: I should also mention that there are numerous frontends for LilyPond besides Rosegarden, above all NoteEdit and Denemo. I will be checking these out as well in the coming weeks.

[Tuomas]

I tried Sibelius under certain circumstances, and I was rather happy with how it worked, basically what I expected. But you got me interested in LilyPond. I'll check that out too perhaps, some day next week. Anyway, a lacking GUI will be the thing that keeps me away then, I'm not very used to that, I never even really experiensed DOS because of using Amiga workbench from the beginning till 2005, and I'm not sure if I have the time or the general interest of goin through it.

Oh, and please do tell us about Rosegarden once you've tried it. I'm changing to Linux sooner or later too when I get a new HD, well, most probably am. Anyway, I know some people who'd probably find it really useful

[Gregjazz]

Sibelius is awesome for the jazz charts I write. It's great for leadsheets as well as big band arrangements. Sibelius is very easy to use and the interface is logical.

However, I think it's important to note that major publishing companies such as Hal Leonard (sorry I'm a jazz guy, that's what first comes to mind), etc. all deal with Finale scores only. It's the industry standard as far as that goes, so bear that in mind.

If you plan on writing jazz in Finale, save yourself a lot of frustration and buy a jazz template for it, or make one yourself.

[Da_Elf]

the last time i went to a digi-design/M-Audio conference i thought the digi-design people said they bought sibelius in order to dismantle it and add its notation system into pro-tools. it would be about time. nuendo has had notation for a while although i found it cumbersome to use.