The Sibelius Rock & Pop Collection contains 108 pitched instruments plus 20 drum kits, of which you can play up to 32 at once. It includes all the sounds you'll need to write rock and pop music – from guitars, keyboards and drums to horns, strings, and even a Hammond B3 organ.
The collection has been created in partnership with Sonic Implants and Native Instruments, and includes well-known instruments such as a Fender Stratocaster guitar and Rickenbacker bass. Multiple samples are provided for many of the instruments, with different styles and tones so you can get just the sound you're looking for. Despite the name, it does include more than just guitar, drums and keyboards - a good selection of wind instruments means that the Rock & Pop Collection is quite versatile. You can find a complete listing of the instruments included on our web site.
There are a lot of great sample libraries out there, but trying to get them to work with a notation program such as Sibelius can be a real challenge. Even when you get them working, you have to work with MIDI control messages to select the correct instruments and adjust playback parameters such as attack, or velocity. This can be time consuming and frustrating to say the least. By integrating these sample libraries directly into Sibelius, the Rock & Pop Collection offers an extremely easy way to get the best playback possible - it is as easy as selecting the instrument you want from a drop list, and Sibelius does the rest. It even takes care of adjusting the attack and velocity based on the articulations and dynamic markings on the page. In other words - it "reads" your music just like a musician - instead of you having to program a computer!
Obviously we are strongly in favor of software that thinks like a musician and doesn't require a computer science degree, and this Sounds Collection from Sibelius is perfect in that regard! Understandably, since it is designed to integrate into Sibelius, you won't be able to use it with other programs, such as Sonar or Cubase. This is really the only disadvantage of an otherwise excellent collection.
Notation & Scoring
