In this first blog, I will go through the layout of the program and point out key buttons that are used to operate it.
Quick Start Screen
When you first activate Sibelius, a new project page will appear. This is where you can alter the parameters for your new project, similar to a screen that appears when you open a new Pro Tools track.
From here, you can select a instrument template for your score, depending on the genre of music that you want to create (6-piece jazz, full orchestra, pinao etc). From there, you can also alter things such as tempo, time and key signature, and even alter things such as 'house style', which are font and other design choices that give the score a look that is characteristic to a genre. You can also change the instruments if you are not happy with the template, adding or subtracting as many elements as you wish.
With all that boring stuff out of the way, its time to open the program!
When you open up a project, the layout is very similar to that of Word, or any other Microsoft program. The layout is governed by ribbons and main headings.
Under the 'home' ribbon, one can find useful functions quickly - these most notably include basic cut/copy/paste functions, adding or replacing instruments, as well as adding or deleting bars. These functions are intended to be used 'on-the-fly' during composition, accounting for any ideas that may appear that were not part of the project when Sibelius was first opened.
The next three ribbons are the Note Input, the Notation, and the Text ribbons, which gives the composer all the tools they need to digitally communicate all their wonderful ideas! But for now, I will skip over their functions as they will be the focus of tutorials yet to come.
The Play ribbon is what is needed to playback what you have written so far, with the Layout Ribbon, which is associated with how the score looks, including distances between staves, the margins and orientation of the paper, and so on and so forth. The Appearance ribbon has similar functions, with a focus on the layout of the notes.
The software also has a Review ribbon for collaboration purposes, such as adding comments or reviews.
In my opinion, on of the most important ribbons is the 'view' ribbon, the last one on the banner, because it contains the 'panels' heading. Within this heading, there are choices for multiple windows that contain extra features that can be shown or hidden.
During my project, I found that the most useful of these panels to have showing were the keypad and transport windows. The transport window operates in a similar way than in Pro Tools (if you are unfamiliar with this program as well, it basically acts as a mobile and ever-present way to navigate through the track, to stop/start playback, to go a few bars ahead or behind, and to increase or decrease the tempo, eliminating the need to constantly go back to the Play Ribbon), and the keypad window is of course vital in actually writing in the notes of the music, which will be discussed in the next tutorial - stay tuned!
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