Could anybody please explain to me why somebody thinks Sibelius is a great songwriting programme? I thought it was better suited to classical music score. Please correct me. Thanks

G'day Sam,
I have no opinion other than Sib, like Finale, Noteworthy Composer and innumerable others is a notation program - it is designed for creating musical notation.

How that might or might not fit into your songwriting process is up to you.

For myself, I find that Noteworthy's ability to be quite freeform to be a great aid in "noodling" on the computer.

I am not, and probably never will be, a song writer, but I do write arrangements for stuff we do at church and I find NoteWorthy to be a very useful aid. I think it would be equally useful if I were a songwriter. I imagine those familiar with Sib. (could) do much the same thing.

Yes, that's what I thought. I would see it as a notation programme. It is certainly not IMHO a real songwriting programme like we have with BIAB and RB. Or am I still missing something?

Hi Sam. As said, Sibelius is a notation program. That might be all a songwriter needs; it depends on who is using it and how they prefer to work. But it certainly is not an accompaniment generating program in the sense BIAB is.

I don't find Sibelius particularly easy to use, and prefer a few other notation programs, but many professional musicians like Sibelius very much. Sometimes it all comes down to which one you learned first.

Also, if you are planning on purchasing Sibelius, be aware all the programmers were recently fired in the takeover and its future is in question.

Sibelius is great for jazz as well as classical.

Especially for the bigband composer/arranger.


--Mac

Its just that I have finally formed a band and my keys player was studying composition at Vienna University. I mentioned PG but she didn't seem to know it and said she used Sibelius. I said I believed that to be for classical notation but she said it was for songwriting... I wouldn't even attempt to consider it myself but maybe it is what the university recommends

I somehow doubt she has any idea what PG products do... Sib would be her tool of choice for notating what she writes. Kinda like a word processor for writing a book.

That's what I thought. Thanks, All

I'm not a decent note reader but I have used BIAB's Notation Window and Piano Roll Window to drag those little fly specks around to where they sounded better. Trial and error, in computer programming and music composition, is permissible and, in my case, preferable.

If you are interested in Sibelius and are concerned about being able to read her files, there is always Sibelius First, which is to Sibelius what Finale PrintMusic is to Finale. Costs a whole lot less, but you can open and edit .SIB files.

Here is a comparison between the two products.

Thanks, John. Seems both can export MIDI...

Any music notation program should be able to import and export MIDI. That's the common language of the tool.

Reading the native Sibelius files is another matter.

Remember, chord symbols will not transfer in MIDI, and sometimes other miscellaneous data is omitted or mangled.

I head Sibelius would take a simple tune, and then arrange it for differing uses.

Like input Mama's little baby likes ...and have an arrangement for Brass Band so it knows which instruments to make lines for, ie. there are no violins in a brass band. As to writing for some 5 man electrical countryfied band, well, maybe not so much.

But any arranger spends hours on a single bar, if not days, so there is no real shortcut, unless you are one guy and his guitar and sit and strum on the park bench by the bus stop in Tumbleweed West Texas.


I think someone should arrange these words to a country waltz version, Mein Herz und mein Sinn...

Sorry, I love that waltz...but I want a pretty alto to sing it to me with violas and oboe d'amore's and scented roses under...

dort wo die alten Häuser stehn
dort wo die lieblichen Mädchen gehn,
Wien, Wien, nur du allein...

Oh could I just waltz again with strong legs, going until dawn....but it is, what it is, I'll just watch, not too soon from above...

Matt, would it export a melody in bar form with the full notation? That is a major question for me. The chords are irrelevant as I will arrange the melody myself

John, I think you have had too much of the Wieno (sic)

Yes, John has it basically right.

Sibelius has its own built in "arranger'.

You can create a basic Fake Chart of Melody Line plus chordnames and then with one mouseclick you can have Sibelius make a full arrangement for a number of different types of ensembles, String Quartet, Brass Choir, Full Orchestra, Choir, smaller vocal singing group, etc. on the Classical side of things, and for the Bigband arranger, you can instantly make it into say a Basie arrangment or a Sammy Nestico or a Duke arrangement, etc.

Sibelius knows how to break that Melody and Chords out into parts for all the instruments involved in the chosen style and presents you with the full score of the work, all automatically. You can then just accept that, or you can go in there and Edit if you like.

And Sibelius does this so fast that it is always a bit disconcerting to me, even after all these years.


--Mac

Well sorry Sam but at the drop of the hat the anthem of Vienna,

Wein, Wein just comes into my brain.

I think I sang it for my wife when were were there a few years ago.

The melody just stays, and I wonder if anyone ever county -fied it.

I had the student version of Sibelius for a number of years. When I got a new desktop, it would no longer let me register it. Then, I read they are going out of business so I bought PrintMusic. For what I do, I can't see paying for the full version of Finale or Sibelius. There are some things I like better with PrintMusic than Sibelius and vice versa. I mostly just use it for melody for a couple of instruments. Whatever "arranging" I do is very minimal. I still struggle with BIAB notation but I do use it for a few bars once in awhile. The wizard is pretty good if you are also good at keeping an even tempo as you tap the keys. Of course you also have to be able to count well. My wife says that I'm the CPA who can't count. There's little I can say to contradict her. .

Stan