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Summary: Thank You Sibelius!!!!
Review: Musical notation is my JOB, and Sibelius is a dream come true. It took me a while to decide where to go after being an Encore power user for so many years, but when I saw Sibelius 2 and was able to get my hands on it for just a few minutes, I fell in love with it immediately, ditched Encore, and put Finale (where I thought I might end up) and the others out of my mind entirely. (I actually have Finale, and I've had to do jobs on it, but it's never given back anything but frustration. Now I stress out at the thought of having to use it, and I rarely accept jobs on it because I'm given plenty of work on Sibelius, and I can get twice as much done.) Sibelius, the program itself, helped me to make the decision to choose it as my professional choice for musical notation -- copying, transcription, arranging, and composition. Sibelius is competitively priced and worth every penny. It's created by musicians and composers who understand what music needs to look like on the page. It's extremely intuitive and easy to use and learn. The Sibelius employees are mostly musicians and music educators who understand your concerns and are eager to help and please. The program has an incredibly fast learning curve if you're new to it, it's cross-platformed, and it just keeps getting better. I'm here, waiting for version 3, and couldn't help but give my opinion about version 2. Buy it! It's unbelieveable~!
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Summary: Warning: This software is highly addictive!
Review: Sibelius 2.0 has arrived, and it is the best thing to enter my musical life since my decision to start studying the cello. It is amazing what it can do, and how easy it is to do it. It took no more than a quick perusal of the (aptly named) Quick Tour in the manual to get me started most effectively. Though I have found the program so fascinating that on more than one occasion you could have caught me reading the manual in bed, and honestly: software manuals are not my preferred reading material!
The makers of Sibelius seem to have thought of everything. As yet I have been unable to think up a task it couldn't perform. O, well, that's not quite true: it seems to be unable to react adequately to dynamics where a hairpin diminuendo is followed by a subito return of the original dynamic (say: ff...dim...ff). But that's the only instance. It took me no more than the spare hours of the week following my acquisition to arrange a song for solo cello and soprano into a version for full symphony orchestra - and I'm certainly no professional composer!
In contrast to other notation software I tried, Sibelius works according to the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (and hear) principle. No fuss about turning your notation into a printable lay-out, it's all there right away. And in playback all the more usual textual additions regarding expression, tempo and technique are observed, though admittedly I have found playback of glissando's or quartertones somewhat problematic.
As an amateur composer I have no illusions about ever hearing any of my larger scale writings performed, so the playback possibilities are of some importance, as they will be to many users of the program. Of course there is no way the MIDI-sounds could pass for anything other than synthetic (though bassoons, flutes or percussion come of quite passable - strings, trumpets and voices on the other hand less so). Yet, applying Sibelius's extensive mixer functions, and its possibility to add 'Espressivo', 'Rubato' and suitable acoustics, in combination with a decent playback device yields surprisingly plausible sounding results. Though it should be added that getting things right in this respect is a bit more time-consuming and will of necessity partly remain a trial and error process, especially if you use the MIDI-plug in to make sure dynamic hairpins are being played back for held notes.
A great number of 'plug-ins' is provided which will do anything from analyzing the harmonic structure of your score (beat by beat if you like) to checking for parallel fifths or finding all the appearances of a particular theme or motif. Checking instrument ranges is another useful feature. Sibelius will tell you the true range of the instrument, but will also let you define the range you regard playable for a particular group of amateurs, and subsequently show where you cross that limit.
Possibilities for selecting and editing passages either horizontally, vertically or both are unlimited and speed up work considerably. As does the possibility to enter notes using mouse, PC-keyboard and (electronic) piano keyboard simultaneously. And no need to get all confused about different clefs and transposing instruments: if you like you can write everything in the same clef and as if all instruments are tuned in C, and when you're finished Sibelius will put it right, literally at the push of a button.
I could go on for quite a while yet, but you'ld better read it for yourself in the manual. I have hardly been able to keep away from my PC since Sibelius is on it. If ever there was an occasion to spend a bit (or even a whole lot) more money than you intended, this is it!
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Summary: Excellent Music Writting Program
Review: Sibelius has been my score writter of choice since I purchased it 18 months ago. As a professional musician, teacher, and copyist, I have found this program invaluable. It is easy to learn and speed increases with many one key shortcuts that are intuitive. Three methods of input, mouse (slowest), keybord (faster), MIDI keyboard (fastest), are available to the user. The program follows all modern conventions in music notation and allows the user to change these as desired. The newest version (1.4) supports importing scores from Finale, a great help for professional copyists that have scores in that difficult program's format. It can also import MIDI files and transcribe them to a Sibelius score, and save a file in MIDI format.
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Summary: The best in music software!
Review: Sibelius is the best music software on the market. Before deciding to purchase Sibelius I investigated many of the notation softwares out there. Despite its hefty price, Sibelius is truly the only software for writing music. It is easy to use and can do practically anything desired. Whether a proficient musician or a novice, Sibelius helps one produce music in an instant. It is simply the best there is!
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Summary: Is there something better than this?!
Review: Speaking as a professional musician who works on a variety of projects and owns Sibelius, Sibelius is a capable scoring software package but suffers horribly from being counter-intuitive in use, requiring one to constantly go to their small bible of a manual to find out how to do simple things that other software performs without the little treasure hunt. Sibelius violates the GUI standards set down for the Macintosh as well, adding another bit of difficulty -- command + period? no, try the "escape" key -- more like a Windows application. I guess the authors did not like "click + drag" selection either! If one works with lyrics then they are in for a real bout of hair-pulling when it comes to entry and editing such. It is better in terms of use than Finale, still, and can produce nice scores but it leaves me wishing that I could run my older software which was much quicker and capable to use than Sibelius. In short, yes, there is capability here but at a price greater than the cost -- the cost in extra time and frustration in figuring it out and trying to make deadlines with it.
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Summary: It's sitting somewhere on my shelf
Review: This is the most overrated software I have used. I kept hearing from Sibelius adds about how much easier it was to use than Finale and that it could do the same things that Finale could do. Wrong! First of all, you basically have to have a MIDI keyboard to get any decent input at all. It's not like Finale where you can get around without a keyboard. The output looks like something that came from my old sequencer programs. You also have to make sure that you do everything perfect the first time and don't change your mind because editing parts of the score is probably the most difficult feat to accomplish in Sibelius. They even pop up warnings letting you know that you can't undo some things.
The interface is amateurish and made for kids to use. Every score you make looks the same and it is difficult to add your own personal touches. I much prefer Finale which gives me the power to do anything I could want to do. Finale takes a bit longer to learn because it is more complex and, like anything that is worth learning, it just takes some practice. I would only suggest buying Sibelius if you just write music as a hobby and not as a profession (only if you can't find a copy of Finale).
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Summary: It's sitting somewhere on my shelf
Review: This is the most overrated software I have used. I kept hearing from Sibelius adds about how much easier it was to use than Finale and that it could do the same things that Finale could do. Wrong! First of all, you basically have to have a MIDI keyboard to get any decent input at all. It's not like Finale where you can get around without a keyboard. The output looks like something that came from my old sequencer programs. You also have to make sure that you do everything perfect the first time and don't change your mind because editing parts of the score is probably the most difficult feat to accomplish in Sibelius. They even pop up warnings letting you know that you can't undo some things. The interface is amateurish and made for kids to use. Every score you make looks the same and it is difficult to add your own personal touches. I much prefer Finale which gives me the power to do anything I could want to do. Finale takes a bit longer to learn because it is more complex and, like anything that is worth learning, it just takes some practice. I would only suggest buying Sibelius if you just write music as a hobby and not as a profession (only if you can't find a copy of Finale).
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Summary: Exceptional Software
Review: This product is one of the best designed, most powerful and user-friendly software applications I have ever used. Bar none - in any saftware genre. It is a pleasure to use. If you know how to read and write music, you can start using Sibelius because that is how it is designed. There is hardly any learning curve at all. You do not have to translate your musical knowledge or transform your thinking habits to fit into a new way of doing things. Sibelius is to music notation as Word is to writing. You buy it and you use it. I have used Finale and you can do a lot with it. But it will give you headaches. Some of their programming and interface design decisions make no sense. In fact they are counter-intuitive and counter-musical. I would buy Sibelius over Finale for the layout features and part extraction alone. Again- in Finale these are things that you might be able to do after you have used the program everyday for six months. In Sibelius - from day one. And I must rebut some earlier claims. First of all their tech support is great. Courteous and professional. And it is toll free! Amen. Also the manual. You will love this manual. Some earlier reviewer said "manuals" - plural. Not true. There is one manual and it is exceptionally well written. It is actually fun to read. Yes- I am talking about a software manual. No, I am not insane. Great manual. And they are committed to never ever replacing the manual with electronic help. (they have electronic help if that is what you like) The fact that it is used by people like Steve Reich, John Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, Alf Claussen, Ray Charles, etc. doesn't hurt either. And to the previous reviewer - I would hardly call these gentlemen wannabes! Also Boosey and Hawkes uses it, Oxford University Press uses it, etc.
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Summary: Sibelius 2
Review: Very pretty interface design, but I purchase software to get a job done. Unfortunately Sibelius 2 is too slow to be used as a music engraving tool. And contrary to their slick advertising copy, you can't get much done out of the box without studying the manuals in detail. I think I'll leave this one to the amateurs and the wannabes. The best, and still champion, in this category is MakeMusic's Finale 2003.
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Summary: Sibelius 2
Review: Very pretty interface design, but I purchase software to get a job done. Unfortunately Sibelius 2 is too slow to be used as a music engraving tool. And contrary to their slick advertising copy, you can't get much done out of the box without studying the manuals in detail. I think I'll leave this one to the amateurs and the wannabes. The best, and still champion, in this category is MakeMusic's Finale 2003.
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