Sibelius 5

Reviewed by Daphne Kalfon

Sibelius Software The Old Toy Factory 20-23 City North, Fonthill Road London N4 3HF 0800 458 3111 infoUK@sibelius.com Sibelius Australia 2/52 Weaver St., Edwardstown SA 5039 08 8277 1722 infoAU@sibelius.com http://www.sibelius.com

$498.95 USD, $530.135 CAD, £ 240.780 GBP, €369.00 Euro Requirements: Sibelius 5 is a Universal Binary application. Mac OS X 10.4 or later, 512 MB+ RAM, 350MB hard disk space, DVD-ROM drive. Recommended for optimum performance: G5 or Intel processor, 1GB+ total RAM, 3.5GB total hard disk space.   Sibelius can be purchased for multiple licenses and various bundles, depending on individual needs, so consult the website for more details.   To read about what’s new: http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/5/index.html At this link above, there are options to download a free demo, watch a movie about Sibelius 5, and purchase the software.   Strengths: Highly versatile, adaptable to virtually any notation project and creates beautiful, professional looking scores.   Weaknesses: A few too many options for those only interested in creating traditional scores; Kontakt Player interface has an unnecessarily busy look and clunky feel; not compatible with the very high quality orchestral sound pack that comes with GarageBand.

Introduction

Sibelius 5 is the newest upgrade to Sibelius 4 Professional. New features have been added, and improvements made to some of the features found in Sibelius 4. This along with new built-in sounds, VST and AU compatibility and the new mixer, allow you to create any kind of score, instantly play it back, manipulate anything on the score, print to a myriad of layouts, publish/share your music, and sell your music on the web.

Getting Started

Installing Sibelius 5 went without a hitch and was a quick, easy process following the steps in the new manual.

Sibelius 5 comes with a small booklet which consists of the chapters “Installation”, which explains the upgrading process, “What’s New”, which goes through all the new features that have been added to Sibelius 5 - from playback to overall look and feel - and the last section is “Appendices” which contains a section on all improvements made up to present, menu changes from Sibelius 4, and lastly, new and changed keyboard shortcuts.

The program comes with a new collection of sounds called Sibelius Sounds Essentials. This sound library consists of a complete set of General MIDI sounds along with chosen sounds from Siblieus Sounds Rock and Pop Collection, Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Marching Band, Garritan Jazz and Big Band, and Tapspace’s Virtual Drumline. This kind of collection has been designed to be usable for many different genres of music.

If one wishes to have all the sounds from within any of the sound libraries contained in the Sibelius Sounds Essentials collection, one can purchase the full versions.

In addition, the program comes with many example scores, from band and choir to jazz, orchestral, guitar tab, playback example scores to show the difference between a “Meccanico” and “Espressivo” playback, assorted QuickTime movies provided for film scoring practice, and “ideas” type scores which I will explain in more detail later on. I opened and listened to several of these various scores and thought that in general the sound quality was okay, but not great.

Sibelius 5 comes with 17 tutorial videos covering everything from getting started to publishing on the Internet. I watched several of them and although many were helpful, I hoped that some of them would get into more detail, especially in regards to the new Kontakt Player and the new mixer as they contain many new features. Or perhaps there could be two sets of tutorial videos as there are manuals – one for quick reference of basic concepts, and another for getting into the details. There is also the in-depth reference PDF and online help centre.

Using the Software

I started by loading up one of the ready-made scores that come with the program, so that I could use it as a base for trying out the various features of Sibelius 5. One thing I noticed right away in doing this, is that when the sounds for the score are loading upon playback, there is a very flashy thing going on – the window showing the sounds being loaded in - which is rather unnerving to have to see each time. I wonder if perhaps this loading could be accomplished in a more “behind the scenes” manner, rather than front and center?

Sibelius comes with the new Native Instruments Kontakt Player 2 which is an enhanced version of the sample player from previous versions, and it now is able to play sounds from many various sample libraries. And depending on your computer CPU, you can have more than one player at once and up to 16 sounds per player. Sibelius is also compatible with many virtual instruments, and you can set up your own playback configuration of any combination of virtual instruments that are available to Sibelius and switch between the different configurations.

I think it’s unfortunate that with all the new additions of VST and AU virtual instruments and sound banks, that Sibelius could not have integrated the orchestral sound pack of GarageBand into this new version of Sibelius, because in my opinion, they are among the best I’ve heard and used.

For those who own Kontakt Gold, GPO Sibelius Edition or Siblelius Rock and Pop, the updates to allow these to work with Sibelius 5 are free.

I find the Kontakt Player a bit clunky to use and it was also a little glitchy, as I had to reload or reallocate instrument sounds for no apparent reason from time to time. I generally found the interface of the player to be hard on the eyes and a bit too busy.

The mixer is quite a nice feature, with volume, pan, mute, solo and other options for each instrument. The effects buses allow for the use of whatever compatible effects you have available in your arsenal.

I applied a reverb effect and then a delay, both to the same bus, so that the whole score was affected equally, and then applied them to separate buses for experimentation, and they seemed to work well, as the knobs allow you to adjust how much of each effect you would like to apply. Then I applied a very non-orchestral type sound effect, and I can see how one could have a lot of fun with this if you are looking for a non-traditional or very specialized type of sound for your music. There are 4 effects buses with 2 slots each, and 4 master effects slots.

One thing that is annoying when you are picking and choosing what effects you would like to apply, is that you have to close the “playback devices” window before you can preview what effect your chosen device has on the music.

I was able to choose the horn sounds of a compatible virtual instrument, however playback seemed to be a bit glitchy - some tied notes didn’t tie or play at all and hairpins weren’t played as accurately as when using the horns that come with Sibelius Sounds Essential.

It seems that any compatible virtual instrument you wish to use with Sibelius must have MIDI channel options, because if you can’t allocate a specific channel to a sound, Sibelius, won’t be able to play that virtual instrument.

In general however I feel that both mixer and Kontakt Player could use some simplifying à la GarageBand otherwise it seems a bit too technical for orchestration projects. In that same vein, I would suggest having both as an outside additional option to use rather than THE new interface for choosing sounds etc.

I very much like the new “Ideas” feature. Sibelius comes with a library of over 2,000 ready-made ideas of all kinds, from synth lines to drum beats to orchestral snippets. To find an idea, you can do a specific search for what you’re looking for by typing in key words. Once you find something, you can click and hold the mouse over it to listen to it, and if you want to use it, you can easily paste it into your score.

These ideas can be exported or shared between users and or teachers and their students, and “ideas” also allows you to copy and save your own musical ideas, whatever they happen to be, into a library of your own ideas for future reference.

There is a convenient new way of viewing your score called “Panorama” which allows you to view your score in a single, wide strip or scroll style, rather than in pages. This makes it much easier to see your score as a whole and to navigate around it. Together with the “Focus on Staves” option, you can much more easily work on one or more particular staves of your score instead of trying to edit just those staves out of the whole score on the page.

There is now a cue feature for adding cues to parts and a feature for implementing instrument changes within a stave for example when one player is assigned to two or more instruments. I tried the latter feature and was impressed with how smoothly instrument changes take place. There are improvements to and more options for bar numbering, page numbers and rehearsal marks, a new family of fonts called Reprise which are especially suitable for jazz, lead sheets, big band and show music, the new Opus Note Names font which writes the name of the note inside the notehead (very handy for students learning to read music), a couple of new fonts for chord symbols, 200 extra music symbols for early music and avant garde music, and more than 20 new plug-ins as well as updates to many existing plug-ins.

In overall look and feel, Sibelius 5 is pretty similar to Sibelius 4, so a new user of Sibelius 5 can get started pretty much right away. Some of the menu items have been renamed or moved to other menus and these changes can be found in Appendix B of the handbook that comes with Sibelius 5. Appendix C lists new keyboard shortcuts.

All other improvements are listed near the end of the handbook for quick reference.

Conclusion

I don’t feel that Sibelius 5 is an absolutely necessary upgrade for everyone. It depends on what your individual needs are and what you look to Sibelius for the most. If you are strictly writing orchestrations for traditional orchestra and other ensembles such as chamber music or choral music, then the previous versions should do just fine. However, if additional options outside of the traditional realm are needed or appeal to the composer in you, then Sibelius 5 might well be a worthwhile upgrade.

Recommendations

In all I would say Sibelius 5 is a very impressive and comprehensive software program, with virtually something for everyone, from neophyte to professional, from student to teacher, no matter what notation project is on the agenda. As always however, I recommend anyone to take the guided tour available on the website as well as to try out the free downloadable demo, before you decide whether or not to purchase.