Sibelius Question & Answer Thread

[Luke]

Ah, I was wondering what that was - envisaging all sorts of things!

Presumably when you get rid of the percussion line the tempo markings will realign themselves. But you can also manually drag a marking from the percussion part to the piano part, and the others ought to follow suit. Is that the sort of thing you mean? Problem with that is, when you get rid of the percussion part, it might wreak havoc with your layout again. Personally, I'd just leave it to do what it will until the time comes to delete the percussion part.

I get the feeling I've missed the point of what you are asking, though!

[karlhenning]

Ah, I was wondering what that was - envisaging all sorts of things!

Presumably when you get rid of the percussion line the tempo markings will realign themselves. But you can also manually drag a marking from the percussion part to the piano part, and the others ought to follow suit. Is that the sort of thing you mean? Problem with that is, when you get rid of the percussion part, it might wreak havoc with your layout again. Personally, I'd just leave it to do what it will until the time comes to delete the percussion part.

I'll give that a go, when I get to the end. (I am keen to get to the end, but the piece feeling like a stretch, I feel I'm really working to get to the end.)

I get the feeling I've missed the point of what you are asking, though!

Maybe this is something later than version 3? . . . but I have an idea there's a document settings page on which I might deselect one staff and select another. And it's characteristic of my 'knowledge' of the software that I have an idea I've been to that page, but have no inkling how I got there . . . .

[greg]

It's not quite that way; the startup for Sibelius 5 is from the Third Symphony.

lol That's true- forgot about that.

Greg - cut-out scores: when I did something of this ilk for Elegy and Ascent, it was a matter of hiding staves, which you can do by changing the staff type. But it's a bit labour intensive and fiddly, something I'd leave tlll last so that you don't make subsequent changes that will mean resetting the whole thing.

Well, I'll try it out...

[karlhenning]

Is it? And I have Sibelius 3, with startup from the 5th! Though I turn it off, as I don't want such sublime music to start annoying me.

How do you switch it off? : )

[Luke]

How do you switch it off? : )

Well, in Sibelius 3, it's easy - File > Preferences > General, then unclick the 'play music at startup' box (or whatever it says). Recently, for some reason - a fault of my computer though, I suspect - it's being deciding to reinstate the music now and then, which is a little annoying. Much as I love those magical opening bars, it's starting to ruin them for me!

[karlhenning]

Thanks!

[karlhenning]

Well, in Sibelius 3, it's easy - File > Preferences > General, then unclick the 'play music at startup' box (or whatever it says). Recently, for some reason - a fault of my computer though, I suspect - it's being deciding to reinstate the music now and then, which is a little annoying. Much as I love those magical opening bars, it's starting to ruin them for me!

Got it! The menu has gotten a little more involved, so I had to do a little searching, but you set me on the right path. Thank you, again!

[karlhenning]

. . . Personally, I'd just leave it to do what it will until the time comes to delete the percussion part.

That was the ticket, exactly, Luke;  drop that percussion staff, and all the tempo markings do appear (as they ought) on the piano staff.

I have a separate problem, also resulting from that dratted ; ) percussion staff, but which was not an automatic fix:

As you see from comparing the scores of Fair Warning and Suspension Bridge, the staves in the latter are sized too small (a consequence of that percussion staff I front-loaded the score with) . . . what's your advice for re-sizing the staves?

TIA ; )

[Luke]

Not sure I totally understand why they are the smaller size, but it sounds like they might be 'small stave' size, which on Sibelius 3 you can change from the default (75% I think) up to 100% by going - House Style > Engraving Rules > Staves > [changing small stave size]/ Alternatively, a rougher fix, you could simply make the staves bigger in the normal way - Layout > Document Setup > [change staff size]

Hope this helps!

[karlhenning]

Thanks!

[karlhenning]

How to change noteheads for just a portion of a staff?

[Luke]

Do you mean notehead shape? Have the Properties window open, select the Notes dropdown, select the notes you wish to change and then choose the notehead of your desire from the options offered!

[karlhenning]

Thanks, Luke!

[Karl Henning]

TTT

[Karl Henning]

Anybody around, who might field a question?

[Karl Henning]

Anybody around, who might field a question?

I reckon not! : )

Don't even remember what question I was thinking to pose, anyway....

[Karl Henning]

I thought there was already a topic. Just a report on my recent experience. I had to get a new laptop, and reinstallation of Sibelius went fine, but I had trouble activating it. I didn't get any response from the Avid customer support e-mail address, which obviously I found annoying and unprofessional. Then, I had the thought of reaching out to them via both Facebook and Twitter, and they got back to me promptly on both channels.

[Papy Oli]

Maybe that thread you had in mind, @Karl Henning  ?

https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,8955.0.html

[Karl Henning]

Maybe that thread you had in mind, @Karl Henning  ?
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,8955.0.html

Just so. I should have thought Composing and Performing, rather than Diner.

@DavidW ... merge 'em?

[krummholz]

Never knew about this thread. Okay, now that it's here in Composing where I check regularly, I do have a question, and it concerns using Sibelius with 3rd-party libraries. I've been a happy NotePerformer user for three years now, running inside Sibelius, and I'm gratified that Arne has fixed some outstanding issues in NP4 and added support for selected 3rd-party libraries, but... there is always a but... the selection is limited. I'd like to prepare a mock-up of my first String Quartet that actually sounds realistic, and I've started on a second SQ (just yesterday in fact) that would REALLY benefit from this technology, but there seem to be few options for solo strings in the libraries currently available for NPPE - in fact, for a full string quartet, only the Cinematic Studios libraries currently. I've heard mock-ups of string quartets produced with CSSS (including one of my stalled Beethoven sketch variations), and it seems there would be a lot of work involved as the results are full of errors due to latency in the library, and the balance between the instruments is very different than in NP.

The other alternative in the running is VSL SYNCHRON-ized Solo Strings - which has no support via NP at present. My understanding is that for something that uses solo strings together with other instruments, this library would be useless without a supplemental library for the Synchron player as one cannot simply substitute individual instruments from an unsupported 3rd-party library for NotePerformer's native synth.

Is this correct, or can it be done anyway? If so, how? Please note that I'm new to MIDI terminology and do not yet fully understand what MIDI "devices" and "channels" are. NP is plug-and-play... now I'm going to have to actually learn something about this technology.