Bonus! Purchase Sibelius Professional from Kelly's Music & Computers and receive a free DVD Tutorial! (Does not apply to academic versions, please see our Sibelius Academic DVD Bundle for great savings on Sibelius Academic and the DVD Tutorial.)
Please note: Sibelius does not included a printed user manual with Sibelius 5. You may order one here.
Already own Sibelius and want to upgrade? If you can send us a School Purchase Order, we can sell you the upgrade. Otherwise, if you will not be using a School PO, please contact Sibelius directly as they do not sell regular upgrades through dealers.
Sibelius 5 represents the latest advance in the world’s favorite music software. Sibelius has spent many months adding enhancements for writing music, the latest technologies such as VST & Audio Units, and other features, such as the Ideas Hub.
Whether you use Sibelius for writing music, teaching or just for fun, don’t be afraid of getting up-to-date. Sibelius 5 is better and easier than ever, and once you’ve tried it you’ll be glad you made the change!
Ideas Hub
Ideas are precious. That's why Sibelius 5 gives you the Ideas Hub - the easy way to capture, tag, find and bring together your musical ideas. With Ideas Hub, you’ll never let another flash of inspiration slip by again.
As well as your own ideas, Ideas Hub comes preloaded with over 2000 ready-made ideas. They cover all styles of music and help provide useful inspiration for your compositions.
Stunning built-in sounds
Sibelius 5 comes with Sibelius Sounds Essentials as standard – a 2GB collection of sounds selected from top-name libraries such as Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Jazz & Big Band, Garritan Concert & Marching Band, and Tapspace Virtual Drumline.
VST & Audio Units support
A huge variety of VST and Audio Unit instruments are available from numerous manufacturers – and now Sibelius 5 can play back using any of them! So you can hear your scores played back by the world’s most advanced sound libraries.
Panorama
Panorama is a clearer way of viewing music in Sibelius. Instead of being chopped up into systems and pages, the music is shown in a single, infinitely-wide strip – far easier to read and navigate around. So now you can just think about the notes, and forget about page layout until you’re ready to print.
Easy cues & instrument changes
Creating cues in parts is the work of a moment. Just copy the music you want to appear in the cue, and choose Paste As Cue. Sibelius 5 does the rest for you. And changing instruments on a score is equally simple.
Complete layout control
Sibelius 5 also offers users complete and easy layout control, covering bar and page numbering, blank pages, sheet music margins and more – making it easier than ever to produce beautiful scores.
Power tools & undoable plug-ins
Incredible hand written-style fonts, chord symbols, note names, functional analysis, early music and avant garde symbols, plug-ins with undo… Sibelius 5 has it all.
Universal Binary
As usual, Sibelius 5 supports the very latest technologies. It’s now a Universal Binary application, so it runs at top speed on Intel-based Macs. You can use it on the Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.5), and it also has improved tab, mouse and scroll wheel support.
Ideas Hub
Ideas Hub is a unique feature that lets you capture, use and re-use snippets of music. As well as using your own ideas, over 2000 ready-made ones are included – ideal for teaching.
Never lose another idea
When writing music you often come up with a bit of melody, rhythm, accompaniment or chord progression with some potential. Now, instead of wondering what to do with it, just tap a key to store it in the ideas Hub. Then you can re-use these ideas later in any score, just like pasting from the clipboard; Sibelius even transposes ideas into the right key and range.
Tag, organize and search
An idea can be a passage of music of any length, any kind and for any number of instruments. Once you’ve captured an idea you can edit it, tag it with your own keywords (e.g. canon, lyrical, riff) to help find it later, or even color-code it. The Ideas window lets you browse and search through all the available ideas by keyword tags, instrument, time signature, key and so on, and even play them back. Plus, you can export them later to share your ideas with other people.
Ready-made ideas for students
Over 2000 ready-made ideas are included for students to use, in a huge range of styles from classical, jazz and band to world music, rock and hip-hop. By using these ideas in their music, students of all abilities can discover how melodies, harmonies and rhythms can be put together to create differing textures and musical structures.
They could start with just one or two ideas for inspiration, or alternatively use ideas as building blocks to create a complete piece. You can keep track of what they’ve done, because Sibelius marks where ideas are used in the score.
If you prefer, you can switch off all of the ready-made ideas, or just give students a few specific ones, for more focused exercises.
Panorama
Panorama is a clearer way of viewing music in Sibelius. Instead of being chopped up into systems and pages, the music is shown in a single, infinitely-wide strip – far easier to read and navigate around. So now you can just think about the notes, and forget about page layout until you’re ready to print.
You can switch between Panorama and normal view whenever you like, or use Panorama in combination with Focus on Staves if you just want to look at a few instruments.
An easier way to compose
As well as allowing you to forget about page layout during composition, Panorama makes the whole experience of inputting music more enjoyable. Because there’s only one system on the page, Sibelius can move smoothly from left to right as you compose, without any disorientating jumps from one system to another. Dragging staves in Panorama won’t affect the layout of the real score. So you really are free to think about your music without any distractions.
Magic Margin
No matter where you navigate to in your music, Panorama’s Magic Margin makes it crystal clear what stave you’re on. It even reflects changes to instruments on the same stave, something that’s incredibly easy to set up.
Encourages students to create more
Panorama provides benefits in education too. Teachers often find that page layout acts as an artificial barrier for students, and that they stop composing when they reach the end of a page; Panorama removes this barrier, encouraging students to take their ideas further and explore greater possibilities in their compositions.
Stunning Sounds and Playback
150+ high-quality built-in sounds
Sibelius 5 comes with Sibelius Sounds Essentials as standard – a collection of over 150 pitches and hundreds of percussion sounds, covering a wide range of orchestral, rock & pop, jazz and marching band instruments, plus the full General MIDI set. The sounds were selected from top-name libraries such as Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Jazz & Big Band, Garritan Concert & Marching Band, M-Audio Session, and Tapspace Virtual Drumline – everything you need to start producing high-quality playback, audio files and CDs.
Sibelius Sounds Essentials plays back using Kontakt Player 2. It can play any number of sounds simultaneously (limited only by your computer), loads them almost instantly, and has extra built-in effects. Any other Sibelius Sounds you have (e.g. Kontakt Gold, GPO Sibelius Edition) will work better than ever, too.
Enhanced realism
You can now specify exactly how articulations, lines, tremolos and symbols play back – for example, to change the length and loudness of accents and staccatos, the speed of tremolos, or how fast chords with wiggly arpeggio lines are spread. Hairpins automatically read dynamics to work out how loud or soft they should end up, and sustained notes get continuously louder or softer along the hairpin.
Always chooses the best sounds
Sibelius’ revolutionary way of categorizing sounds, called SoundWorld™, ensures that Sibelius always chooses the most suitable sound available on any device – with no need to reset them if you switch equipment. And if you want to tell Sibelius which device you prefer for particular sounds, e.g. GPO for strings and Synthogy Ivory for piano, you only need do so once – just “set and forget.”
Flawless recordings, every time
Even if your computer isn’t powerful enough to play a score back in all its glory, Sibelius can create a perfect, glitch-free audio file, by processing it at a speed that suits your computer. And if you have a fast computer, Sibelius creates the audio file faster than real time!
Kontakt Player 2
Experience breathtaking sounds and effects with Kontakt Player 2.
VST & Audio Units
VST (on Windows and Mac) and Audio Units (on Mac only) are state-of-the-art standards for high-quality instrumental sounds. A huge variety of VST and Audio Unit instruments are available from numerous manufacturers – and Sibelius 5 can play back using any of them! So you’re no longer limited to Sibelius’ sounds – you can now use world-famous ones such as EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Library, Synful Orchestra, and many others. Plus you can use any Kontakt Player 2 or Kontakt 2-format sounds, too.
Many effects to enhance the results (such as advanced reverb, EQ, filters) are also available, which you can chain and mix together. Plus you can use as many different VST or Audio Unit instruments and effects simultaneously as your computer can handle.
Effortless control with a Mixer
The Mixer has been completely redesigned in a compact vertical layout with more features. There are extra faders for VST and Audio Unit instruments and effects, a master volume control, plus you can adjust the volume and pan of whole instrument families (e.g. brass, strings) at once. And if you have an M-Audio keyboard you can use its own faders and transport buttons to control Sibelius’ playback.
Even Easier Instrumental Parts
Create cues instantly
Creating cues in parts is the work of a moment. Simply copy the music you want to appear in the cue, and choose Paste As Cue. Sibelius 5 does the rest for you – it makes the cue small, puts it in a suitable voice, transposes it or changes clef as necessary, deletes dynamics and articulations (optional), adds a text label, hides the cue in the score, and stops it playing back. You can even add a cue to multiple instruments at once.
What’s more, there are two plug-ins to make cueing even easier. Suggest Cue Locations suggests suitable points for cues in your score, based on either the number of bars rest or the duration of a rest in a part, while Check Cues verifies that cues you’ve previously added are still correct, in case you’ve changed the music.
Paste As Cue makes creating cues the work of a moment – Sibelius automatically makes the music small and stops it playing back.
Customize cue appearance
Sibelius 5 does the work of creating cues for you, but you still have complete control over how they appear. You can choose whether you want articulations and dynamics to be included, and whether you want the cue to have clefs and octave lines or be transposed to an appropriate pitch for the destination instrument.
Easy instrument changes
Scores often have two or more instruments played by the same person, such as percussion, or clarinet doubling saxophone. Or sometimes you need to rewrite a whole part for a different instrument. Now Sibelius will do this automatically for you: simply put an instrument change anywhere in the music, and Sibelius 5 will change the instrument from that point onwards – altering its name, clef, sound, even the transposition and staff type if necessary.
Plus, if you write for unusual instruments you can design your own, choosing the name, clef, range, sound, etc. you want. From glockenrimba to trumpet in F#, your imagination is the only limit!
Easy instrument change: Sibelius automatically transposes the music and changes the sound used for playback.
Complete Layout Control
Insert blank pages
You can now insert blank pages anywhere with a couple of clicks, then add text, graphics, etc. to produce title pages and performance instructions. They even work in parts too – in fact, you can make any blank page or title page appear in the score, the parts, or both.
Different margins for different pages
Scores no longer need to use the same margins throughout – you can set different margins on different pages, e.g. to allow room for titles and copyright lines. Plus you can now easily alter margins in parts.
House Styles
When importing a house style, or copying between scores, Sibelius 5 only adds extra text styles, line types, notehead types, symbols and so on where necessary, and won’t overwrite existing ones if they differ. You can also move individual text styles and other object types between scores.
Flexible numbering
Bar numbers, page numbers and rehearsal marks support special numbering formats used in some types of score.
Bar numbers: You can set any passage of music (such as introductions and inserted sections) to use special bar number formats, e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c… or a, b, c… in capitals or small letters. Or use your own prefix/suffix, such as 1 new, 2 new…, alt 1, alt 2… You can also number bars in any frequency you like, such as every 8 bars instead of 10.
Bar numbering can take account of repeats in various formats. Automatic bar numbers can be selected, moved, hidden and filtered just like anything else. And to make it all easier, the main bar number options are all in a single dialog.
Page numbers: Sibelius 5 lets you re-number, change the format of, or hide page numbers anywhere in a score. For example, you could number the introductory pages of your score i, ii, iii… or a, b, c…, with the music pages numbered 1, 2, 3...
Rehearsal marks: Add automatic prefixes/suffixes to rehearsal marks, e.g. 1A, 2A, 3A… And where rehearsal marks coincide with bar numbers, you can hide the bar numbers automatically to avoid collisions.
Power Tools
Music Fonts
Reprise™: Reprise is the latest in Sibelius’ growing range of elegant fonts. In fact, Reprise is a whole family of 9 fonts that produce an astonishingly realistic simulation of handcopying. Its music symbols are drawn with a fixed-width nib (rather than the italic nib used in Inkpen2), and additionally it includes two rubber-stamp fonts for titles and other large text. Special characters and plug-ins are included for adding hand-drawn lines and boxes to text and rehearsal marks, and house styles for incorporating Reprise into scores. Overall Reprise is a beautiful reproduction of traditional hand-copying, in a style particularly suitable for jazz, lead sheets, big band, and show music.
Opus Note Names: The Opus Note Names font lets you write the names of notes inside the notehead – ideal if you’re writing music for students who are just taking up an instrument, particularly those learning piano.
Chord symbols: There are two new fonts for chord symbols – Opus Chords Sans and Opus Chords Sans Condensed – with regular and narrow sans serif characters, similar to Arial/Helvetica. Plus various extra characters can be included in chord symbols.
Functional analysis: Musicologists and students can write functional analysis in Sibelius 5, thanks to the Opus Function Symbols font and text style.
Early music & avant garde: Sibelius 5 includes over 200 extra music symbols for early and contemporary music, such as prolations, Bach ornaments and clusters.
Fits lyrics to music
To save typing all the lyrics into a score, you can add them automatically from a text file – Sibelius 5 even splits them into syllables for you. Or if you type the lyrics in yourself, Sibelius will check that you’ve split syllables in all the right places.
Plug-ins
You can undo plug-ins, so you needn’t be afraid of trying them out! What’s more, the ManuScript language used to write plug-ins supports tuplets, object deletion, notehead types, bar number changes, cue-sized objects, blank pages, time positions, score duration, and lyric syllabification. This makes current and future plug-ins far more powerful. With a total of over 100 plug-ins, the latest ones in Sibelius 5 include:
- Tuplets: Split, join and modify tuplets, e.g. turn two triplets into a sextuplet, or a sextuplet into a quintuplet. Many other plug-ins work with tuplets, too.
- Simplify Notation: Cleans up music input from Flexi-time or a MIDI file by adjusting note values, split points, voicing, etc…
- Film scoring: Fit a passage of music into an exact time by adjusting tempos, and show the exact rhythmic position of all hit points.
- Transform Scale: Turn music from one scale into another, e.g. minor to pentatonic.
Even More Features
Universal Binary
As usual, Sibelius 5 supports the latest technologies. It’s now a Universal Binary application, so it runs at top speed on Intel-based Macs. You can use it on the Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.5), and it also has improved tab, mouse and scroll wheel support.
Power tools
- Clefs change where necessary if you switch between sounding pitch and transposing score
- Transpose to specified key (rather than by interval)
- Add blank pages up to next left/right-hand page (for page turns in complex parts)
- Go To Bar steps through each occurrence of the bar number if it recurs in several movements or songs
- Select & delete system/page breaks & other layout marks
- Export graphics in PNG format, plus BMP on Mac too
- Cue-sized graphics
- Graphics scale on small staves
- 400+ different instruments
- Delete Bar menu item
- Select passage by typing bar numbers
Plug-ins
- Make Piano Four Hands Layout splits the music between left- and right-hand pages
- Add Capo Chord Symbols: for guitars with capos
- Add Continuous Controller Changes: produce special MIDI effects for sample libraries
- Groovy Music Mark-Up: for exporting music to Groovy Music educational software
- Improvements to: Accidentals plug-ins, Calculate Statistics, Pitch Mapping, Scales & Arpeggios
Engraving
- Edit aperture of either end of hairpins individually
- Hairpins no longer cross system breaks unnecessarily, and always point the right way after a system/page break
- Hidden music no longer affects visible note stems and rest positions
- Hide empty staves even if they have hidden objects (e.g. cues) on them
- Accidentals now at correct size when normal and cue-sized voices coincide
Text
- Plain & boxed system text styles (for instructions to appear in score & parts)
- Text styles for composer, title etc. on title pages
- You can make text cue-sized
- Correctly number bars split between two systems
- Select all bar numbers on a system using Select More
- Bar number changes automatically centered in the bar when bar numbers are
- Various different characters in various fonts
- Align page-aligned text to margin of first page or current page
- Filter bar numbers and page number changes
Look & Feel
- Fit Page Height zoom level (useful with Panorama)
- Extra tutorial videos covering main features
- On-screen Reference is in PDF format – opens fast and is easy to read
- Improved dialogs, e.g. Edit Text Style, playback dictionary
- Extra keyboard shortcuts
- Desk textures
- Use different textures when editing ideas
- Texture preview
Playback & MIDI
- Full marching percussion playback (rims, spocks, shots, etc.)
- Show/hide empty staves when importing a MIDI file
- Export Type 0 MIDI files
- Set tick resolution (PPQ) of exported MIDI files
- Choose which sound set to export a MIDI file for
- Multiple input devices – no need to choose which one you’re using
- Alternate pitched & unpitched percussion playback on same staff
Other improvements
- Easy network installation using standard Windows Installer (.msi) package
- Scorch fully Firefox-compatible on Windows and Mac
- Sibelius files much smaller – about 20K plus typically just 1K per page
- Export in Sibelius 4 format
- Various bugs fixed
The fastest, smartest, easiest way to write music is even better.
Whatever your musical style, Sibelius 5 makes writing scores a breeze - giving you more time to focus on the music. Stunning features like Panorama mean you don’t need to think about pages while you’re composing or arranging. You can just let you creativity flow. Ideas Hub is a real first for music software. It lets you instantly capture your musical ideas, and then find them again in a second - so you’ll never lose another idea. Plus high-quality, built-in sounds play back your scores with astounding realism, because there’s no better way to perfect your music than by hearing it.
You can create audio files which can be converted to MP3s or burned to CD, produce instrumental parts effortlessly, compose for video, sell your music online and do hundreds of other things you might never have dreamed of.
Write and refine music easily
Sibelius is so easy to learn and use that you can start writing your first piece within minutes – not days! Discover the joys of writing music with a program that's simple and intuitive. And, of course, being able to change your music in the blink of an eye - no more rubbing out!
Hear your music
The easiest way to perfect your music is by hearing it. Just click the play button in Sibelius to hear your music performed with surprising realism, thanks to the built-in Sibelius Sounds Essentials library. Sibelius reads, understands and plays back all standard markings, and you can buy extra sound libraries for choral music, world music and more.
Print beautiful scores
The world’s largest sheet music publishers use Sibelius to produce the music you see in the shops. Now you can create the same standard of print-out. And with Sibelius, it’s just so easy.
Instrumental parts that magically update
Sibelius makes producing instrumental parts a joy. In fact, when you start your score, the parts are already there. You can flick between them using a simple drop-down. When you make a change to the full score, the relevant parts are automatically updated, and vice versa.
Publish, or sell, your music online
As well as printed music, Sibelius publishes beautifully online, too. You can create web versions of scores which can be viewed by anyone using the free Scorch web browser plug-in. And you can easily start selling your scores online via SibeliusMusic.com.
Sibelius look and feel: The world's most intuitive music software
Sibelius believes that if you find a program hard to use, it’s not your fault – it’s because it’s badly designed. That's why Sibelius has been made as natural as possible to use – the result of years of careful thought and refinement.
- Toolbar: Get the most useful features from the toolbar at the top
- Navigator: Click the Navigator to look through the score quickly – or just drag the paper itself
- Keypad: Choose notes, accidentals and other markings using the mouse or numeric keys
Getting started
Sibelius is so easy to learn and use that you can start writing your first piece within minutes – not days! It comes with a clear, friendly, non-technical handbook, which explains all the main features in just 70 pages.
But if you don't like reading manuals, don't worry – the program includes an hour of tutorial videos that explain how to use it. It also has comprehensive on-screen reference, so you'll never be stuck for an answer.
Clear, elegant design
The Sibelius screen is simple and intuitive, so you can concentrate on writing music without the constant distraction of menus and dialog boxes. To look around the music, just click and drag the page – it really feels like you’re moving manuscript paper in front of you. Alternatively, drag the Navigator to move smoothly through many pages at once.
You can even choose different colors and textures for the paper and desk on the screen.
Creating music in Sibelius: Start writing music quickly and easily
Starting off
Start a score from scratch – specify instruments, page size, title, tempo etc. with a few clicks. Your score is set up instantly, all of the instruments with the correct names, clefs, transpositions and layout.
Then you can input notes in four easy ways:
- MIDI input
- Mouse & keystrokes
- Scanning
- File conversion
MIDI input
Flexi-time™ is Sibelius’ unique system for notating music as you play it on a MIDI keyboard in real time. There’s no need to tap a pedal or play mechanically – just play naturally with both hands, and Sibelius will actually follow you as you speed up or slow down.
You can even listen to the music you’ve already written as you play in more music on top. It takes just seconds to set up your score, ready for inputting notes.
Step-time lets you play pitches from your MIDI keyboard with one hand, and choose rhythms and articulations with the other from the keypad.
Mouse & keystrokes
To input without a MIDI keyboard, 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 instead – specify pitch using the letters A to G, and rhythms from the keypad using the numeric keys. There are many other useful keyboard shortcuts for "power users."
You can get other markings such as clefs, slurs and time signatures from menus; Sibelius even positions them in the right place for you.
Keypad: Choose notes, articulations etc. with the mouse or corresponding numeric key. There are five different sets of symbols to choose from
Scanning
Sibelius includes PhotoScore™ Lite – the state-of-the-art program for scanning printed music. It takes just seconds to read a page, and you can then edit or transpose the music in Sibelius, play it back, extract parts and print – just as if you’d inputted it yourself.
The advanced version PhotoScore Professional (which you can buy with Sibelius) has many extra features, such as reading slurs, articulations, hairpins and text.
* PhotoScore developed by Neuratron Ltd. Scanning copyright music without permission is illegal.
File conversion
Sibelius seamlessly opens Finale™, MusicXML, MIDI, SCORE™, Allegro™ and PrintMusic 1.0 ™ files in seconds – the ideal way to transfer your existing music to Sibelius.
Composing and arranging in Sibelius: You just think of the notes – Sibelius does the rest
Sketch & refine
Sibelius lets you change music whenever you like. Sketch a solo flute piece, then add a whole orchestra to create a concerto. Write in sounding pitch, then make a transposing score with one click. Add extra bars at the start of a score, and Sibelius instantly reformats every page – far more flexible than pen and paper.
If you completely change your mind, Sibelius lets you undo up to 20,000 operations, and keeps backups of 40 previous versions of your music.
Text & lyrics
Sibelius puts different types of text, such as dynamics, titles and lyrics, in the appropriate font, size and position. You can edit these text styles to change text consistently throughout the score.
To input lyrics, just type – Sibelius positions the words under the notes, puts in hyphens and lyric lines, and allows extra room for long syllables. You can also copy lyrics from a word processor.
To save typing all the lyrics into a score, you can add them automatically from a text file - Sibelius even splits them into syllables for you. Or if you type the lyrics in yourself, Sibelius will check that you’ve split syllables in all the right places.
Arrange™
Arrange is a unique feature to help with arranging and orchestration. It’s ideal for students learning instrumental writing, and saves hours of time for experienced professionals.
Just select some music, and specify how you want it to be arranged or orchestrated – Sibelius does the rest in an instant, using appropriate instruments, doublings, etc. It handles anything from keyboard reductions and ‘exploding’ chords onto separate staves, to sophisticated arrangement and orchestration styles, such as:
- Band, using high brass and pitched percussion
- Choir, tenor doubling soprano down an octave
- Jazz, in the style of famous band leaders including Sammy Nestico, Billy Strayhorn and - Thad Jones
- Impressionist orchestration with harp and strings.
Over 150 of these styles are provided, and you can even create your own.
Focus on staves
Sibelius makes it easy to write large scores, by allowing you to view just the staves you're working on.
Copying & transposing
Copying music is far faster than re-writing it, so Sibelius copies anything with one click of the mouse – especially useful for doubled instruments and repeating figures. You can make multiple copies at once, e.g. to put the same dynamics onto every instrument.
Sibelius transposes music instantly into any key, and handles everything about transposing instruments for you. Write music in sounding or written pitch, and switch between the two whenever you like.
Checking for mistakes
Sibelius saves you time by spotting all kinds of mistakes such as rhythms that don’t add up, or notes that are too high/low to play. Sibelius knows every instrument’s range, which you can adjust for players of different abilities.
Sibelius comes with various proof-reading plug-ins, including ones which add cautionary accidentals and even mark parallel fifths and octaves!
Sibelius playback: Hearing is believing
Just click the play button to hear your music performed with surprising realism. Sibelius reads, understands and plays back all standard markings – including trills, repeats, cresc./dim. hairpins, 8vas, glissandos, percussion and drum sets, guitar tab, and even quarter-tones.
Sibelius understands musical words and phrases such as: rit., pizz., Allegro, mute, swing, and change to Piccolo. Musical terms in various languages are already defined in a built-in dictionary – and you can add new words to it, too.
Sibelius lets you select specific instruments and sections of music to listen to, automatically playing the correct instrumental sounds through your soundcard or MIDI equipment.
Espressivo™ & Rubato™
Espressivo and Rubato are unique features which add elegant expression as Sibelius plays. Espressivo makes subtle adjustments to the dynamics to produce musical phrasing, and Rubato varies the tempo, just like a human performer.
Rhythmic feel™, SoundStage™ & reverb
Sibelius lets you choose from numerous "rhythmic feel" styles which make subtle enhancements to the rhythm – anything from jazz swing to Viennese waltz!
When playing back scores for ensembles such as orchestra or band, Sibelius’ unique SoundStage feature positions the sounds correctly in 3-D space, as if the instruments were on a concert stage. You can also choose the reverb characteristics of different natural acoustics.
Because Sibelius has such sophisticated playback features, you can use it for far more than just listening to music. Sibelius makes it easy to check the notes you’ve written, accompanies while you practice, and helps you make rehearsal tapes and CD recordings of your music.
Repeats
Sibelius supports every kind of repeat you can imagine - not just D.S., D.C., Coda, Segno and Fine, but complex repeat structures with up to 8 repetitions. You can even make Sibelius jump between arbitrary points in the score during playback, e.g. to skip guitar fill boxes or simulate aleatory performances.
You can make individual notes, dynamics etc. apply only to certain verses or repeats, so you could have the brass play only the second time round, or make verse 3 p and verse 4 f.
Dynamic Parts™ in Sibelius
Parts in other programs
In other programs, to get instrumental parts you have to ‘extract' them from the full score. You then have to spend time checking them and cleaning them up. And if you make revisions to the score later - which almost always happens in practice - you either have to spend ages making the same revisions in the parts yourself, or extract them all over again. Not so in Sibelius.
Dynamic Parts
Sibelius has a unique feature called Dynamic Parts. You don't have to extract them – in fact, you don't have to do anything to get parts! As soon as you start a new score, all the parts are already there – and you can look at any of them from a list on the toolbar.
As you add music to the full score, it appears in the relevant parts too. In fact, whatever you do to the score, Sibelius instantly updates the parts. Or you can even write music in the parts, and the score will change to match! But you can also change things in parts without affecting the score if you like, such as adding cues.
The parts are transposed if necessary, have bar rests grouped into ‘multirests', and include all the relevant markings such as time signature and tempo changes. So you don't have to think about anything.
Auto Layout™
Sibelius also takes care of the layout of parts for you. It puts page turns at convenient places, and positions rehearsal marks, new sections, key changes etc. at the start of systems, to make them easier for players to locate. In fact, you'll hardly need to adjust parts at all – just a quick look through and then print.
You can print a complete set of parts with one click of the mouse, and even specify how many copies you want for each instrument. Print a complete set of parts with one click.
Overall, Dynamic Parts will save you many hours of work on every score – all the time spent writing out or extracting parts is now a thing of the past.
Worksheet Creator™ in Sibelius
If you teach music, you'll know how long it can take to produce good curriculum materials. That's why there is the Worksheet Creator, created in collaboration with experienced teachers and educators.
The Worksheet Creator frees up many hours of your time by giving you a comprehensive range of ready-made teaching materials – over 1700 worksheets, projects, exercises, songs, instrumental pieces, lyrics, posters, reference material and other resources.
They can be used by individuals or groups in class, or for homework - either on paper or on computer. All of the materials are carefully designed to fulfill curriculum requirements, and to suit school students of all ages. Some of them (such as the repertoire and reference material) are also useful for universities and instrumental teachers.
Many of the worksheets have random questions that are different each time. You can produce both a worksheet for the student and a completed answer sheet to save time when marking. And it all takes just a few seconds.
Creating a worksheet
Just choose from 6 main categories in the Worksheet Creator:
- Elements of music covers music theory and musicianship
- Writing and creating music includes notation, transposing, arranging, composing and improvising
- Selected repertoire has over 400 pieces for voice, piano and other instruments, including songs in 14 different languages and 50 Bach keyboard pieces, suitable for study, arranging and performance. There are also 45 poems to set to music.
- Reference includes over 200 scales and modes, ranges of different instruments, etc.
- Posters, flashcards & games has nearly 200 of these, from notes and keys to pictures of instruments
- UK KS3 & GCSE Projects has UK-specific projects from African drumming to serialism.
Each of these contains further sub-categories – for example, Elements of Music includes 14 areas, such as rhythm, scales, sight-reading and ear training; so with a few clicks you can narrow down your choice to just what you need.
Then just choose how many questions you want - and up pops the student worksheet, ready to use, plus a filled-in answer sheet to mark with.
Using your own worksheets
But you don't have to use the Worksheet Creator materials as they are. You can either adapt them to your own requirements, or create your own worksheets based on blank templates provided. You can also add your own worksheets to the Worksheet Creator for future re-use; or publish them on SibeliusEducation.com for your students to view, play, print and download.
Video in Sibelius
Sibelius is already used for many films and TV shows – from Shrek 2 to The Simpsons. And you can use it yourself to write music to video. This is ideal for everything from student multimedia projects to professional scoring. No other notation program can do this.
As usual, it's very easy to do. You can simply add any video file to a score; Sibelius displays the video in a window, and plays it back in sync with the music. In fact, the video and score are always kept in sync, whether you're writing music, playing back, fast-forwarding or rewinding.
You can play the video at different sizes or even full screen to watch the finished result; and Sibelius' audio export feature makes it easy for you to add your finished music to the video soundtrack.
But that's not all. You can add ‘hit points’ in the score to mark important visual events; these make it easy to write music to fit the action. Hit points automatically move when you alter metronome marks, so you can tweak the tempo to make a hit point fall exactly on a beat.
Videos included!
To get you started, Sibelius 5 comes with a variety of short videos to compose to – ranging from Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition to Chalie Chaplin.
And you can get more for free from SibeliusEducation.com. The Internet also has thousands of adverts and trailers to download, which are ideal for students to write for.
Timecode & score duration
Sibelius calculates the time position (timecode) of every bar and the total duration of the score to high precision – useful for film/TV scoring, or for any work which requires timings.
Timecode is written above barlines and shown as a digital clock during playback, taking into account tempo marks, irregular bars and rits/accels. Display formats include seconds, centiseconds and various frame rates.
(This feature does not display or sync to incoming SMPTE or MTC.)
Sibelius power tools: Sophisticated features to save you time
Plug-ins
Sibelius comes with more than 70 ‘plug-in’ features which do useful things to your score, such as:
- Check for mistakes, e.g. parallel 5ths/8ves
- Harmonize tunes
- Add brass/string fingering
- Automatically create sets of scales and arpeggios
- Halve or double note values
- Realize figured bass and chord symbols
- Automatically generate drum patterns
- Highlight all occurrences of a motive.
Sibelius includes a complete programming language called ManuScript™, so you can even write your own plug-ins.
Properties
The Properties window lets you view and edit advanced information about markings in your score – everything from numerical positions to notehead shapes and text sizes. The information is divided into panels, which you can open and close to reduce screen clutter.
Rulers
Sibelius’s smart rulers show you individual position measurements for each marking and staff – ideal for making fine adjustments to layout.
Find & filters
Sibelius lets you search for notes, text and other markings, e.g. find the word "mute." Filters let you find and edit any number of these occurrences at once. For example, you can easily find all C#s in a harp part, then change them all to Db with a single keypress.
Publishing with Sibelius: The highest quality finished results
Elegant layout
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. The music is beautifully laid out onto pages for you as you work – you don't need to think about it. If bars get too cramped, Sibelius pushes them onto the next page for you, and instantly adjusts slurs, hairpins etc. to suit. Even if you delete large sections, or change the shape of the paper, Sibelius will reformat the whole score in an instant.
But if you prefer, you can change the layout yourself: you can move staves around, specify where systems and pages end, alter note spacings, and squash up or spread out whole passages of music. You're in complete control.
House Styles™ & engraving rules
Sibelius makes your scores look stunning, because it automatically applies hundreds of subtle music engraving rules to optimize every aspect of your score’s appearance. These include Sibelius' unique Optical™ and Magnetic™ algorithms for positioning notes, ties, beams, accidentals, slurs, etc.
You can set ‘House Style’ options to emulate the high-quality appearance of famous publishers, or design your own house style(s) to make your scores look distinctive. A whole menu of options is included, to control everything from text styles and notehead shapes to complex engraving rules.
Control parameters such as beam angles individually or by adjusting Sibelius’ engraving rules
You can even save house styles to disk and import them into other scores.
Graphics & color
Sibelius imports color and black-and-white graphics, for adding pictures, logos, photos, cover pages and special notations to your music. Sibelius comes with dozens of graphics ready to use – or create your own.
You can color in notes, text, symbols, etc. - useful for educational music, marking up sketches, and making important markings stand out. They print in color, too.
You can also export music from Sibelius to graphics, desktop publishing and word processor programs in a variety of standard file formats, e.g. EPS and TIFF. This makes it easy to incorporate music into anything from coursework and exam papers, to books and posters.
No ‘faking’
Sibelius automatically handles many tricky notations that other programs have to fake, such as: collisions between voices (layers), multi-arc slurs with any number of arcs, beams over rests and across barlines, cross-staff beams between three staves, text and wavy lines at any angle (e.g. gliss.), and ossias.
Music fonts & symbols
Sibelius’ standard music fonts Opus™ and Helsinki™ produce an exceptionally high-quality engraved appearance, supplied with alternative noteheads conforming to the US Music Publishers’ Association design standards. Also included is Inkpen2™, a font which simulates handwritten music and text.
Sibelius’ fonts include over 500 music symbols you can use, such as special noteheads, percussion markings, ornaments and avant garde notations.
But you’re not just limited to Sibelius’ fonts. Sibelius is compatible with all the best-known music fonts, including Petrucci™, Jazz™, Susato™, Sonata™, Tamburo™ and Ghent™. You can even design your own symbols using any combination of characters from any mixture of fonts.
Internet publishing with Sibelius
The Internet is the fastest-growing technology of all time – and Sibelius helps you use it to your advantage. Sibelius not only prints your music conventionally, but also lets you put it straight onto your own web site, or onto SibeliusMusic.com, the world’s largest site for self-publishing scores.
Additionally, teachers and educators can publish teaching materials onto SibeliusEducation.com for their students to view, play and print at school or home.
Scorch®
From your own web site, anyone, anywhere can view, play, transpose and print your music. Visitors to your site don’t need Sibelius – they just download Scorch, the free plug-in for browsing scores online. You can also let people save music from your site or SibeliusEducation.com onto disk – ideal for giving coursework to students.
SibeliusMusic.com
From SibeliusMusic.com you can publicize and sell your music worldwide. You can even include your biography, photograph, contact details and list of scores on your own page on the site.
SibeliusEducation.com
SibeliusEducation.com is a web site where you can publish teaching materials and homework for your students (and other teachers) to view, play, print & download from wherever they are, without needing Sibelius themselves.
You get your own school area on the site, where you can organize worksheets and assign them to particular classes of students. The students can then play the music back online to hear how it sounds – much more interesting than a paper worksheet. They can print it out to complete on paper, or download it to work on using Sibelius (at school) or Sibelius Student (at home).
SibeliusEducation.com also lets you exchange teaching materials, information and ideas with other teachers worldwide – and get additional free materials & resources from Sibelius Software.
Special notations in Sibelius
How to notate every kind of music
Many different forms of music notation have evolved over the past ten centuries. With Sibelius, you can create scores in any of these styles.
Avant garde notation
Sibelius handles modern notations such as quarter tones (which play and transpose), complex tuplets (with multiple nesting), feathered beams, colored markings, extreme note values, music in multiple keys, and special note designs. To cover all eventualities, you can import graphics for invented notations and graphic scores.
Guitar tab & chord diagrams
Guitar tab with Sibelius couldn’t be easier. You can input tab just like other music (using MIDI, mouse or keystrokes), or you can instantly convert notation to tab, or tab to notation.
Sibelius has comprehensive support for markings such as bends, slides, hammer-on and vibrato bar. These too automatically convert between notation and tab. You can even write tab for any fretted instrument (mandolin, banjo, lute, dobro...), in any tuning you like.
To get a chord diagram, just name the chord you want, and pick the frame from the choice given. In fact, Sibelius calculates all possible positions for any standard chord. And like tab, Sibelius produces chord diagrams for any fretted instrument, in any tuning.
Jazz, commercial & rock music
Chord symbols, drum sets, slashes and other popular notations are all included – plus the special Inkpen2 font to make your printouts look handwritten!
Early music
For early music, Sibelius easily notates ossias, figured bass, numerous ornaments, incipits, all C-clefs, special barlines (e.g. Mensurstrich), stemless notes and longs. It even writes and plays back lute tablature.
Who qualifies for the academic price on Sibelius?Can blocks of text be added anywhere on the page in PrintMusic, Finale or Sibelius?What program can I use for scanning music?What is the difference between the regular Garritan Personal Orchestra and the Sibelius Edition of Garritan Personal Orchestra?What are the differences between Sibelius and Sibelius Student Edition?
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PC
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Mac
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Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
512MB+ RAM
350MB hard disk space
DVD-ROM drive
You must be running at least Windows XP Service Pack 2 to install and run Sibelius 5.
Additional recommendations for using Sibelius Sounds Essentials and Kontakt Player 2, especially for scores with many instruments:
1GB+ total RAM, 3.5GB total hard disk space, ASIO-compatible soundcard.
You can use Sibelius Sounds Essentials if your computer doesn’t meet the recommended requirements, but you may find that you cannot use as many sounds simultaneously
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Mac OS X 10.4 or later
512MB+ RAM
350MB hard disk space
DVD-ROM drive.
Sibelius 5 is a Universal application, which means that it runs on both older Macs with PowerPC processors and new Macs with Intel processors.
If you are running a version of Mac OS X earlier than Mac OS X 10.4, you cannot install and run Sibelius. You may want to upgrade Mac OS X now, although this normally incurs an upgrade fee. See www.apple.com for details.
Additional recommendations for using Sibelius Sounds Essentials and Kontakt Player 2, especially for scores with many instruments:
G5 or Intel processor, 1GB+ total RAM, 3.5GB total hard disk space
You can use Sibelius Sounds Essentials if your computer doesn’t meet the recommended requirements, but you may find that you cannot use as many sounds simultaneously
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Notation & Scoring
