Hints and tips for using Sibelius
Introduction
Sibelius is a highly intuitive program, and you should find that you can get started writing music almost as soon as you have installed it. The User Guide in your Sibelius box contains a Quick tour section that takes about an hour and a half to work through, and you should follow this through before you do anything else with the program – it introduces the functions that are central to working with Sibelius, and will give you a sound working knowledge of the software.
You should also keep your keyboard shortcuts tower handy; nearly every operation in Sibelius can be carried out without using the mouse at all, so familiarising yourself with the most important key combinations will save a lot of time.
If you have a copy of the demo CD-ROM (which is included with our brochure), this also contains a 40-minute video walkthrough of Sibelius’s most important features. If you’re not sure how to do something, try one of the Reference sections of the User Guide, or look it up in the index.
Don’t worry if you can’t remember all the hints in this booklet! You’ll find the menu at the top of the screen called Create contains pretty much everything you need to write music in Sibelius.
One final thing before we get started: it’s always a good idea to be running the latest version of Sibelius, since we often release free minor updates to the program, adding new features. You can update your version of Sibelius from the User Area of our website, www.sibelius.com, or you can call our Corporate Office for more details: 925 280 0600 (or call Technical Support on 888 280 9995).
Typography
This booklet follows similar typographical conventions to the User Guide (to which you should refer for more details), e.g.:,
• Create Z Bar Number Change means use the mouse to choose the Bar Number Change option from the Create menu.
• X O or Ctrl+O means hold down the X key on Mac or the Ctrl key on Windows and then type O – this is a keyboard shortcut, and in this booklet shortcuts for Mac are always listed before shortcuts for Windows.
Hints and tips
Opening, playing and moving around a score
• Type X O or Ctrl+O to open a score
• Type X P or Ctrl+P to print a score
• Type P to play a score, and type Esc (in the top left hand corner of your computer’s keyboard) to stop it playing
• If you have a note or passage selected when you start playing the score, Sibelius will start playing from that point, rather than from the beginning of the score
• When you start playing a score, don’t forget to press Esc to stop at the end. Sibelius goes on playing your score, even when there are lots of blank pages containing empty
bars (bars)!
• Use the mouse to ‘drag’ the music around (by pressing and holding the mouse button), but click on some blank, white space before you start dragging, or else you
might drag notes, staffs and markings around!
• To zoom in and out of your score (which you can even do while it’s playing), type X +/X - or Ctrl++/Ctrl+- (using the plus/minus keys on the main keyboard, not the keys on the numeric keypad)
• To move rapidly around the score, drag the navigator, the miniature view of the score in the bottom left corner of the screen
• If you want, you can hide the navigator by choosing View Z Navigator (switch it back on again by repeating this)
• A quicker way of moving around the score a screenful at a time is by using Page Up/Page Down (to move up and down) and Home/End (to move left and right)
• To go back to the first page of a score, type X É or Ctrl+Home
• To go to the last page of a score, type X Ě (or xX É) or Ctrl+End
• To go straight to any bar of your choosing, type X G or Ctrl+G
Starting a new score
• Type X N or Ctrl+N to start a new score
• When you start a new score, you must choose some manuscript paper to use. These are templates of blank paper or commonly used sets of instruments, like String Quartet Letter (a string quartet on a letter-sized piece of paper). If you’re not sure what instruments to write for, choose Letter (i.e. a blank piece of letter-sized paper)
• If you chose blank paper, you’ll then be asked what instruments you’d like to use. Simply select them from their families and click Add. When you’ve finished, just click Create.
• You will then have a score consisting of five blank bars. To add more bars, type X B or Ctrl+B. If you keep holding down these keys, Sibelius will add lots of bars (and create lots of extra pages of music)
• There’s no command to make a new page in Sibelius – to make more pages, just add more bars to your score
Entering notes
• Remember that there are five ways of adding notes:
• by using the mouse and keypad, or typing the letter-names of the notes in the score;
• by using step-time note entry (choosing a note length on the keypad and a bar rest in any staff, then playing on the MIDI keyboard);
• by recording live, using Flexi-time™;
• by scanning using the free PhotoScore Lite program; or,
• by importing MIDI files, Finale, Allegro, PrintMusic or SCORE files directly into Sibelius.
• The onscreen keypad corresponds to the numeric keypad on your computer’s keyboard – try to avoid using the mouse! The number 3 on your numeric keypad selects eighth-notes (quavers), the number 4 selects quarter-notes (crotchets), and so on.
• You can use the arrow keys to move notes up and down in pitch, once they’re on the screen and selected (or you can drag them with the mouse)
• You can change the length of any selected note by choosing a different note-value on the keypad, then typing the Enter key on the numeric keypad
• You can always respell the pitch of a selected note or passage enharmonically – e.g. to write F# as Gb – by typing Return (the key at the right of the main block of letters on your keyboard, usually labeled with an arrow, not the Enter key on the numeric keypad)
• There are actually five pages (or layouts) of different functions in the keypad. If you need to get to the other four layouts not normally displayed on the screen, type F9-F12 (the function keys above the main block of keys on your keyboard) to get to them. The normal, first layout of the keypad can be obtained by typing F8
• The numbers 1-4 on the keypad refer to voices 1 to 4. Generally speaking, always enter your notes using voice 1 (so your notes go blue when selected). Use voice 2 occasionally when you need a second, independent line of music on the same staff as music you’ve already got (like soprano and alto parts sharing the same staff), and you should see that the notes go green when selected. You shouldn’t really need to use voice 3 or 4.
• When you start using the keypad to enter notes, and you have a note length selected, the mouse pointer should go blue (or green for voice 2). At this point, you should be able to point and click notes anywhere on the screen.
• What if you want to stop adding notes? Simply press the Esc key, and the pointer will stop being blue.
• The quickest way of inputting notes is often to copy notes you’ve already entered – read on!
Selecting, copying and deleting
• To select an object (such as a note, rest, piece of text, or a symbol), just click it
• To select a bar, click on a blank part of the staff (i.e. not on a note), and the bar is enclosed by a blue box
• To select a passage, select an object or a bar, then Shift-click on another object or bar, and the selection is enclosed in a blue box
• Don’t forget that a single click inside a bar (but not on any note) should select the whole bar. A double-click on a bar will select that staff throughout the current system (line of music). A triple-click on a bar will select that particular staff for the whole score
• To copy notes, bars and passages from one place to another, don’t use the standard shortcuts X X/X C/X V or Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V (unless you need to copy between different files). It’s quicker simply to select the notes, move your mouse to where you’d like the music to be copied, then use z -click or Alt+click to copy (hold down the z key on Mac and click the mouse button, or hold down the Alt key on Windows and click the left mouse button)
• Whenever something is selected in Sibelius, it should go blue (or green for voice 2). At this point you can copy whatever is selected to somewhere else on the score, just by using z -click or Alt+click, even dynamics and symbols!
• If your mouse skills are good, and you use a Windows PC, you can also try pointing the mouse where you’d like the selected note or marking to be copied, and clicking both mouse buttons simultaneously. This is called a chord-click, and does the same thing as Alt+click
• There are times when you might want to select notes or other objects that aren’t next to each other. If you do need to do this, click the first note you need, then X -click or Ctrl+click on any other notes, and you’ll see that Sibelius just selects these; you can then alter them all at once, copy them, add articulations, etc.
• Using filters (Notes Z Filters) can help you select notes in a certain pitch, position or voice, and can also help you to choose the top notes of chords, for example, which is great when you want to ‘explode’ a piano score into an arrangement for single-note instruments. You can also do multiple searches at once, by returning to the Filters menu and refining your search – e.g. to find all the sixteenth-notes on the third beat of the bar. Having found the notes, you can edit them all at once, instead of searching painstakingly through your whole score
• If you need to delete a note, just click on it and hit Delete. Sibelius will replace it with a rest
• If you click inside a bar (but not on a note), and then hit Delete, Sibelius will delete all the music in the bar, and replace it with a rest
• If you double-click or triple-click, you can select more music and then delete it (see above)
• If you need to remove bars you don’t need (for example, at the end of your piece if you used Flexi-time to input the notes), do the following: X -click or Ctrl+click inside the first bar that you don’t need (you should get a double blue box around that bar). Then go to the final bar of your score (make sure you don’t click on any actual music while you’re doing this) and Shift-click inside the final bar you want to delete. This should give you a double blue box around all the offending bars. Then hit Delete!
• One final thing! There are times when you want to stop selecting things in your score. To do this, simply hit the Esc key, and whatever you had selected should return to being black, rather than blue. It’s now no longer selected
Adding other objects to your score
• T adds a time signature to your score
• K adds a key signature to your score
• Select a note or chord, and type R. This will repeat the note or chord that’s already selected; you’ll get an exact copy of it next to the original. Hold down the R key, and you’ll get a whole stream of notes!
• Select a note, and type N. This will give you an extra note, a third above the selected note. You can use the arrow keys on your computer’s keyboard to move the note up and down.
• Type L for the Lines dialog box, from where you can choose things like trills and pedal markings, and simply draw them in your score. Don’t forget that you can copy lines, text, etc. around your score by using z -click or Alt+click, just like copying notes
• S adds a slur above or below a selected note. Use the space bar to extend this to the next note, and use Shift-space to pull it back one note. Pressing X flips the slur to the other side of the note, if necessary. You can pick up either end of a slur by clicking the mouse in the little blue box that appears when the slur is selected, and you can also pick up the middle of a slur to alter its curve.
• U displays the Guitar Frames dialog box; you can create any guitar frame you like, and simply position it in the score
• H adds a hairpin (crescendo) below a selected note. Use space/Shift-space to extend and retract it (just like a slur), and drag the hairpin with the mouse if you need to reposition it; you can also select either end of a hairpin and drag it
• Shift-H adds a diminuendo hairpin below a selected note
• I brings up the Sounds dialog box, where you can alter the sounds in your score, and also the muting, panning, balance and MIDI channels
• Y displays the Clefs dialog box – if you need to change clef during a score, or at the beginning, just select the clef you’d like, click Create, then click on the score. Sibelius will redraw all the notes to suit the new clef
• Z displays the Symbols dialog box, for any weird and wonderful symbol you might need to add to your score. Symbols are all available in four different sizes
• Dynamic markings such as p or mf are entered as text – see below
Entering text
• Type X E or Ctrl+E to add dynamic markings in your score; the mouse pointer should go blue. At this point, click somewhere near the note you’d like to add the dynamics to (typically just to the left of the actual notehead). It should change to a flashing cursor (or caret). At this point, you can either type your text, or else click the right mouse button (on the Mac, use Control-click) to see a sub-menu of common dynamics, and simply choose one; when you click it, it is typed into your score. When you’ve finished entering dynamics, hit Esc
• One useful plug-in allows you to add text (like dynamic markings) to multiple staves at once. Just select all the notes in your score at a given point (by Shift-clicking on a specific note), then choose Plug-ins Z Copy Text to Multiple Staves, and choose the marking or text that you’d like to add from the plug-in dialog box
• To get lyrics, type X L or Ctrl+L, and click near the note at which you want the lyrics to start. A flashing cursor below the staff should appear. Then:
• simply start typing lyrics; Space will take you to the next note!
• Use the hyphen key if you have a word with two syllables; Sibelius will jump to the next note ready for the next syllable – there’s no need to use the Space bar
• If you’re at the end of a word, but you want lots of notes over the last syllable, just go on hitting Space until you reach the note where you want the next word to start
• When you’ve finished inputting lyrics, hit Esc
• You can double-click on lyrics to select all the lyrics in a line of music, and use the up and down arrow keys to alter the vertical positioning
• To put miscellaneous text (such as general instructions) in your score, type X T or Ctrl+T, click where you want the text to go, and simply start typing! You can use the Return key (on the main keyboard) to get a new line. When you’ve finished, type Esc to stop entering text, then re-select your ‘block’ of text with the mouse and you can then move it around anywhere on the page by dragging the mouse, or by using the arrow keys. Simple!
• To add chord symbols to your score, type X K or Ctrl+K, then click near the note above which you’d like the chord symbol to appear, giving you a flashing cursor. Now right-click (or Control-click on Mac), and a word menu of all the standard chord symbols will appear. Just choose what you need. For Am7, for example, you’ll need to choose A, then get the menu again to choose m7. When done, simply hit the Space bar, and Sibelius will jump to the next note, ready for more chord symbols to be added
• You can even add chord symbols to your score automatically – select the staves you want to add chord symbols to, then choose Plug-ins Z Add Chord Symbols
Layout and formatting
• If you ever need to make the spacing of notes or bars wider or narrower, just select what you want to respace first (so it goes blue), and then hold down the z or Alt key and use the left and right arrow keys. You should see the music and all the spacing change accordingly
• Don’t forget that you can always force a system break, and push music onto the next system, by selecting a barline (so the actual barline goes blue), then hit Return (on the main keyboard), and all the music after that barline is forced onto the next system – just like in a word processing document. You shouldn’t normally need to do this
• You can also force all the music onto the next page, by selecting a barline (as above) and hitting X -Return or Ctrl+Return. You’ll then have a page break in your score, just like a word processor. As with system breaks, this isn’t usually necessary
• Occasionally, you might want to force the spacing of Sibelius to make more bars fit on a particular line than you currently have. To force the spacing, select the bars that you want to end up together (by clicking inside the first bar and Shift-clicking inside the final bar). You should get a blue box around all the bars you want to work on. Now choose Layout Z Make Into System, and Sibelius will indeed squeeze all the selected bars into one system. You’ll get some blue padlocks on the screen, to warn you that you’ve locked the spacing. Don’t worry – they don’t print out (and you can switch them off on your display by choosing View Z Breaks)!
• If you want to hide instruments in your score when they’re not playing and have lots of bars rest, the easiest thing to do is to select your whole score ( X A or Ctrl+A), and then choose Layout Z Hide Empty Staves. Sibelius then hides all the
appropriate instruments. You can always get them back, by following the same action and choosing Layout Z Show Empty Staves instead. You can also perform these actions on selected passages in your piece, rather than the whole score
• Don’t forget that you can align objects in a row or a column on your scores; just select all the markings you’d like to align (by clicking on the first object, then X -clicking or Ctrl+clicking on all the subsequent objects in turn). Then choose Layout Z Align In A Row or Align In a Column, and you should find everything realigns itself. Then, while all the objects are still selected, use the arrow keys to fine-tune their positions as necessary
• If you want to have fun with the page layout of your score, just choose Layout Z Document (or type xX D or Ctrl+Shift+D). A dialog box will appear, where you can change the paper size, orientation, size of your music and page margins. Click OK, and Sibelius will instantly reformat your whole score
Swapping voices
Occasionally, you might want to swap the voices that your notes are in: most commonly, you might do this if you have two staves with music on them, that you’d like to merge into one staff instead. Simply select one of the staves (probably the one with lower pitched notes), so that all the notes go blue. Then, inside the Notes menu, you’ll find the option to swap voices, typically from voice 1 to voice 2. The notes will then (of course) go green. You can then hit z -click or Alt+click to copy them into your other staff. You’ll end up with two voices on the same staff, with stems up and stems down.
Plug-ins
Do check out the plug-ins included with Sibelius; they often automate tasks that would otherwise take a long time, such as adding chord symbols to your score, checking for errors in your music, or even doubling the note-values of all your music. Make sure you have the latest version of Sibelius to get access to all the latest plug-ins.
Irregular bars
If you ever need some bars of an unusual length, but you don’t want to put in an odd time signature, you can do this. Typically, you’d need to do this if you’re creating worksheets where you want to notate a scale in whole notes (with no barlines), or if you’re writing a cadenza or recitative. To create an irregular bar, as it is called:
• Choose Create Z Bar Z Other
• In the dialog box that appears, click Irregular, and choose the actual length you want your bar to be (by choosing note-values – you can choose 8 whole notes, for example)
• Finally choose how many of these irregular bars you want (Sibelius defaults to giving you 1), and click OK
• Sibelius will then give you an extra irregular bar in your score (with a double blue box around it). It looks completely innocent, like any other bar in your score – until you put any notes in it!
Editing staff types
A rather advanced feature (but very useful) is the ability for any staff to be notated with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or zero lines. Any staff can change during the course of a score from one type to another – as many times as you like. Why would you need to do this? The most common scenario is when you simply want to erase a staff half-way through a line, perhaps when you’re creating a worksheet. Try this:
• Start a new score with just a single treble clef instrument. You’ll get 5 bars in your score as usual
• Choose Create Z Staff Type Change. You’ll see lots of choices for what type of staff you might need. Choose No lines (hidden)
• The mouse pointer goes blue; click somewhere inside the first few bars of your score. You should see the staff disappear
• Try dragging where the staff type change occurs, using your mouse – you can move the change-over point left and right
• If you want the staff to reappear as a 5-line staff later in the score, just create a 5 lines staff type change, and insert it in the score
• You can in fact copy and paste your staff type changes – just like copying and pasting notes – using z -click or Alt+click
Changing noteheads
If you need to change the notehead of a specific note, remember there are 19 different notehead styles in Sibelius:
• Click on the note (or notes) you want to change, so they go blue
• You have two options for scrolling through the different noteheads you’d like. You can hold down Shift and press the up and down arrow keys. Sibelius will go through all the possible noteheads you can have. Just stop when you reach the one you want.
• Alternatively, select the notes, and then type a number using the keys across the top of your main computer keyboard (not the keypad). Each number represents a different notehead. For numbers above 10, just type the two digits quickly, one after the other
Drum mapping
When you’re notating for a 5-line drum set, you might want each notehead to make a different drum sound. How can you change the sounds played by each notehead?
• Create a score with a 5-line drum set instrument, and put some notes on the score.
• For the moment, just add some normal notes to this staff, although you can of course change some of the noteheads of the notes (as above)
• Now you’re ready to do some drum mapping. Make a mental note of one of the notes you’ve created, and remember where it is on the staff. It might be making a bizarre sound at the moment, but we can change this!
• Choose Create Z Staff Type Change, and select the Drum set radio button
• On the next dialog box, make sure you click where it says 5 lines (drum set), so that this goes blue, then click Modify
• You should now be inside a new dialog box, with two ‘tabs’, one that says General and one that says Drum set. Click on the Drum set tab
• This is where you do the drum mapping. You should have a staff with lots of notes in it. Using this little window, click on the note you’d like to change, so it goes blue – as an example, try the note on the top line of the staff
• Once selected, have a look at the Notehead box below. It should say Normal. You can alter this to choose any of the 18 noteheads that Sibelius has, but leave it as Normal for the moment
• Below, you can see the word Sound, and it will probably say Ride cymbal 1 (because that’s the default sound notes in that place in the staff make). You can click on this, and perhaps choose another sound from the list that appears – Cowbell, for example. Then click Edit and Sibelius from that moment on will remember to make that sound for that notehead in that place on the staff (but only for that particular score)
• Then click OK in that box, and Close on the next dialog box, to take you back to your score. You should then find that the sound of your drum notes has changed That’s how you do drum mapping. Once you’ve done your note mapping, you can save your amended score as a piece of manuscript paper, so that it’s a template for you to use in the future, whenever you write for drum set.
Editing text styles
One other piece of modifying that it’s quite common to do is to change the way text behaves in your score. As an example, here’s how to change the default setting of lyrics
• First, add some notes and lyrics in your score. Now, you can change the way the lyrics look, if you’d like them to be a different size or font
• Choose Create Z Text Z Edit Text Styles. A dialog box appears, listing all the different types of text that there are in Sibelius. Scroll down until you see Lyrics, and select it (but don’t select Lyricist or Lyrics verse 2 etc.), then click Modify
• You should now find yourself inside a new dialog box with five ‘tabs’, labeled General, Border, Horizontal posn, Vertical posn and Repeat. This is where you can alter what you need
• For example, inside the General tab, which is already open, change the Size of lyrics to 11, and switch on the Italics box
• Now click OK to close that dialog box, and Close to close the previous screen You should find that the lyrics you previously typed have now changed. You can always return to the same box later to make some more changes.
And finally…
• If you go wrong at any stage, writing music, don’t panic! If you type X Z or Ctrl+Z, Sibelius will ‘undo’ your last action. If you go on typing X Z or Ctrl+Z, Sibelius will undo more and more actions, until eventually it has undone everything you’ve done! You can also redo your actions.
• You should be able to figure out all the other things in Sibelius, as you go along. If you run into problems, try the User Guide, or visit the list of Frequently Asked Questions and chat page in the User Area on www.sibelius.com, or else contact technical support.
• Most importantly, have fun!
