To start with, writing music has never been quicker than with Sibelius. There are three ways to input notes into Sibelius. Flex-time is Sibelius' unique system that lets you play from a MIDI keyboard in real-time. There's no need to tap a pedal or play mechanically. You just play naturally with both hands, and Sibelius will follow your tempo whether you speed up or slow down. Step-time lets you play pitches from your MIDI keyboard with one hand, and choose rhythms and articulations form the keypad with the other hand. Mouse and keystrokes allow you to input quickly without using MIDI. Pick note values and accidentals from the keypad with the mouse, and click to place them in the score. For extra speed, use the computer keyboard using the letters A to G for your pitches, and rhythms or other markings from the numeric keypad. The keypad lets you choose notes, articulations, ties, tremolos, etc. quickly either with the mouse or the keys themselves. You can get other markings such as clefs, slurs and text from menus and place them in the score with a click of the mouse. Finale, Encore and Score file converters are coming soon from third-party developers. Ease of use is perhaps, the best feature of Sibelius; though it is complex and elegant, it is easy enough for an absolute novice to use. The screen is simple uncluttered so you can concentrate on writing music without the distraction of menus and dialog boxes. You can even choose different colors and textures for your manuscript paper design.
Playing back your score is a dream. Sibelius automatically plays all the correct instrumental sounds through your soundcard or MIDI equipment. It reads, understands and plays all standard markings in your score without any tiresome set-up, including trills, repeats, text markings, 8vas, percussion and even guitar tab and drum set notation. The unique espressivo feature makes your sound very realistic, unlike the mechanical playback you might expect from a machine. Sibelius adds phrasing and expression as it plays, even giving a slightly different performance every time. It is possible to have a playback dictionary so you can specify words and phrases in any language and define how they sound, such as cresc., pizz., gets lightly faster and more. All standard musical terms are already defined for you and you can add new ones, as well. The SoundStage and Wing and Reverb controls play back an orchestral or band score; and the unique SoundStage positions the sounds as if the instruments were on a concert stage. You can also adjust the reverb settings to simulate different natural acoustics, and add swing to jazz music.
Fitting your music on every page never has been easier! Sibelius's unique page layout means that you won't have to worry about spacing, formatting, or how your score will look when it's printed. As you add instruments, notes and lyrics to your score, Sibelius instantly applies hundreds of built-in engraving and spacing rules to organize your music on the page in the most appropriate and pleasing way, pushing bars onto subsequent pages if the music gets too cramped. The process is entirely automated, giving the most elegant results. Slurs, trills and other lines attach intelligently to notes, and stretch or contract if the spacing changes. You can also change the layout yourself. You can specify page and system breaks, freeze the format of pages, alter note-spacings, and squeeze in or spread out whole passages of music. Part extraction from a full score takes just a few seconds. Almost no cleaning up of parts is required. Sibelius does it all, including grouping bar rests together, splitting these at all necessary points due to time signatures, rehearsal marks, or key changes, etc. transferring all relevant text and markings form the full score, and replacing all of the music. Transposition is fast and it can even transpose in mid-score.
Sibelius can produce two different end products in the same program: either print your music conventionally, or place your score straight onto a web site. Any Sibelius score can be saved as a web page so that people who visit your website can view it, even if they don't have Sibelius themselves. They can even transpose and play back your score, using a free downloadable plug-in. No separate graphics or MIDI files are required. It all works straight from your Sibelius score. Chord symbols, drum set kit slashes and other popular notations are all included plus a special Inkpen font to make your printouts look handwritten. For early music, Sibelius easily notates ossias, figured bass, numerous ornaments, incipts, all C-clefs and "longs." It even writes and plays back lute tablature and converts it to or from notation for you.
Sibelius offers third-party plug-ins and filters which expand its considerable capabilities. The music scanning, PhotoScore Lite, comes with the program. The full professional version of PhotoScore has some hot new features such as reading articulations, slurs, hairpins and text in addition to music notation. Other plug-ins that already come free with Sibelius include checking for parallel 5ths/8ves, writing note names above notes and batch processing for converting many MIDI files to Sibelius format at one time.
The filter feature allows you to search passages of music for specific pitches, rhythms and articulations. For example, you could easily find all middle C quarter-notes in your score and accent them with a single mouse-click.
Sibelius by Sibelius Software LED is $599 with a U.S. educational price of under $300. Sibelius product pricing may vary from country to country as local pricing is market driven. You will also need to register Sibelius in order to use it at one of two Technical Centers depending on which country you reside in. The North American tech center @ 617-450-0070, which serves North America, South & Central America, the Caribbean Islands and Bermuda. You must be a resident of these countries to register Sibelius at this tech center. The United Kingdom tech center @ +44 1223 302765 or +44 1223 355980 serves the rest of the world and will register users in all other areas outside of the Americas. Hardware requirements include a PC 486 DX-100 or faster CPU with Windows 95/98/NT4 or later, 8-16 MB RAM, CD-ROM drive (any speed), 15 MB+ free hard disk space. Some features require printer, soundcard, MIDI keyboard, Internet access, web site, scanner. A Macintosh version is coming later this year. U.S.A. address: The Helms Building, Suite 216, 8800 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034. Phone: 800-4-SIBELIUS. Web site: http://www.sibelius.com