Creating digital music is about more than audio. Notation remains an essential way to communicate among musicians. Notation is deep and complex, so there’s plenty to talk about. As a long-time Sibelius user, though I want to discuss some core techniques that I find open up a lot of other possibilities, techniques to which I continually return. I happen to be sharing this at a discussion at the City University of New York Graduate Center today, so the timing seems right.

Teachers and experimental, avant-garde composers have something in common: you often need to convince notation software to behave in a way that’s contrary to the expected norm.

To save you time, notation software generally assumes that all music has bars, and that those bars go from left to right with everything visible. This is especially true in Sibelius, which is able to perform as quickly as it does because everything you see on a score is relative to a position in a bar, rather than being set up arbitrarily as you would in a page layout program.

That works much of the time, but what if you have music that isn’t in a time signature? What if you’re transcribing early music or world music that doesn’t operate in 4/4? What if you’re making a quiz in which you don’t need bars, or want to have a blank space for students to fill in answers?

Updated: Just days after this feature, Sibelius announces Sibelius 6. Relevant to this story, this means at least some of the manual hacks for things like beaming across bars and feathered beams will now be automatic! Neat! I’ll have to do new tips for Sibelius 6 when it arrives.

Technique 1: Staves and Instrument Types

Oddly enough, the answer to all of these questions is basically the same: change the way the staff is displayed. You’ll still need to account for bars behind the scenes, but once you learn how to handle Sibelius’ staff options, this isn’t so difficult. This step is a bit confusing for those of us (hand raised) who have been using Sibelius since 1.0, as Sibelius 5 changed the name of this option from Staff Type Change to Instrument Change. (The latter makes more sense in conventional music, even though the former will make more sense for this tip.) But the technique is basically the same.

To insert a new instrument type, right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac, or choose Create) and select Other > Instrument Change.

Select Choose from > All Instruments and Family > Others (for the most generic type).

You’ll see some useful options already. In addition to choosing different numbers of lines, there’s an option that entirely hides a staff — “No instrument(hidden)” – and options that show just barlines or just bar rests.

Try selecting the “No instrument (bar rests shown)” option, then click in the score where you want the change to happen. You’ll see a blue rectangle around the barline at which the change is inserted. Clicking this barline in the center will allow you to select the change itself. Once selected, you can drag it left and right to change the point at which the change occurs, or press Delete to remove it. (That’s important for hiding portions of staves, as you’ll need to be able to select them even when hidden!)

You can imagine lots of possibilities for using this simple technique. For quizzes, for instance, you might simply hide the portion in which you want a student to fill in an answer. Or you can use those hidden bars to help space out a quiz. Or you can use some hidden bars to provide space for a graphical notation in a contemporary / experimental score.

For all of those applications, though, you may need some different variations.

To create your own instrument type, choose House Style > Edit Instruments.

Choose Ensembles > All Instruments, then Families in ensemble > Others to get the generic types.

Let’s try creating a staff type that looks like a normal treble staff, but hides the barlines. Select “Unnamed (treble staff)” and choose New Instrument… to create a new instrument that will be based on that existing instrument. Sibelius will ask if you’re sure. (It can smell uncertainty. You’re sure.)

Under “Name in dialogs,” choose a useful name, like “Treble staff (barlines hidden).”

There are actually lots of powerful options here, but skip straight to “Edit Staff Type.”

Under General, you can choose the number of staff lines and what objects are shown.

Uncheck Initial barline and Barlines, and you’ll have a staff with hidden barlines.

Also make sure to uncheck “Used as default staff.”

Bar rests won’t make much sense if you don’t have bars, so click the Notes and Rests tab, and uncheck “Bar rests.” You’ll want to leave the Rhythms options, because you probably do want rhythms in this case, just not the barlines and bar rests. (Unchecking Rhythms could be useful, though, for things like plainchant.)

Again, to insert, you’ll right click, choose Other > Instrument Change, and use the blue arrow to click where you want the change to go. Here’s our result:

And yes, this can be handy for printing out blank notation paper if you’ve run out / forgot your manuscript notebook. (Been there.)

One last note: you may have noticed that you still have bar numbers. Check House Style > Engraving Rules > Bar Numbers. Other global score settings are found here, so you should get in the habit of a trip to the Engraving Rules any time you’re creating a new score or developing a new template.

Technique 2: Noteheads

Just about anything you can’t do with staff types, you can do with noteheads.

The most useful notehead, of course, is a dead notehead.

Okay, that sounded like some sort of anti-notehead bitterness. But seriously, by hiding noteheads, again, you can create all sorts of alternative notations, and because stems are still visible, musicians can more easily see where beats are. You’ll also need noteheads for percussion notations and the like.

To change notehead types, make sure the floating Properties window is visible (Window > Properties). This is useful for changing other settings, too, so it’s well worth exploring. In the dropdown, you’ll see headless noteheads (position 7).

You can also edit your own Notehead types, just as with instruments and staff types, by selecting House Style > Edit Noteheads.

One other neat trick using the Notes panel is that you can turn on and off tuplet brackets. That allows a little hack that gives you feathered beams. You’ll find instructions under Feathered beams in the manual (p. 79 in my edition).

Technique 3: Locking Layout

The problem with just hiding barlines and such is that you still have bars underneath, and they’ll continue to automatically flow as Sibelius adjusts the layout. With most scores, that’s a good thing, but with ametrical scores or quizzes or short example snippets you want to export, that’s obviously a bad thing.

The solution? It’s time to learn the keyboard shortcuts for locking your layout in place.

System breaks: Click a barline and hit the enter key. You can insert forced system breaks just like carriage returns (line breaks) in a word processor. You’ll see an icon above the score both in the line with the break, and the line immediately following.

Page breaks: Ctrl-Return / Cmd-Return breaks the page.

Special breaks: You’ll find other options in Properties > Bars, including a Special Page Break that inserts a blank page. Click a barline first, then choose from the drop-down menu in Bars.

Indentation: You can move a line left or right by clicking the left-hand side of a stave, then moving it right with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down ctrl (PC) or cmd (Mac) to move by larger increments.

Expand or contract bars: Invariably, you’ll find some of the automatic spacing doesn’t look quite right – especially in these special cases. Click a bar, then press shift-alt (shift-opt) and the left and right arrow keys to make a bar wider or narrower.

If you ever get lost with any of these steps, Layout > Reset Position restores the default.

Technique 4: Exporting Score Snippets

At a certain point, as a composer or a teacher, you don’t always want to do all of your page layout in Sibelius. Likewise, I’m surprised that people don’t more often use little snippets of scores to communicate ideas, whether it’s highlighting a specific comment on a bigger score, or using notation software to quickly communicate short bits of music. Obviously, this is useful for musical examples in essays and the like, too.

When you’re ready to export parts of a score, you have several methods in Sibelius:

The graphics-copying way. Choose Edit > Select > Select Graphic (Alt-G), and Sibelius gives you a bounding box that allows you to select a portion of your score. (If you select your bars before choosing this option, it will attempt to snap to the right area, from which you can adjust it further if you like.)

Once you have the area selected the way you like, use the standard copy shortcut (ctrl-C / cmd-C), then choose your word processing or layout app and paste. To cancel out of this mode, hit Esc.

Most of the time, this is really all you need to do, unless you’re concerned about higher-quality output. In that case…

The export way. If you need to fine-tune output options and DPI, you should instead use File > Export > Export Graphics. Here, you can select the format you like. OpenOffice isn’t listed, but choosing the Sun StarOffice(TIFF) method is your best bet. For Word, choose the explicit Word EPS setting for the highest-quality output.

The PDF way. If you’re on a Mac or have Adobe Acrobat Professional (or another PDF generator) installed, there’s an additional way, which is to export to PDF. I find that inserting PDFs is the best way to go for inserting later to software like InDesign. The default PDF creator on Mac is pretty good, but a full version of Acrobat is often preferable to other options.

Screencast: Sibelius has a screencast of these techniques, which you’ll find from the opening screen.

Technique 5: Making Teaching Materials

The other techniques all work for teachers and composers alike, but when you do need to teach…

Does all of this seem like a lot of work? Still not sure how you combine the layout techniques above to make something look like a quiz, flash cards, or the like? Need to teach something and running short on time?

A recent feature in Sibelius is a comprehensive, shared set of teaching materials. (If you want to share and share alike, you can also publish your own materials to the site and spread the love.)

You’ll find the site itself at:

http://www.sibeliuseducation.com/

When you open the program or choose File > Worksheet Creator, you can tap into these resources.

Choose Template, and you’ll find a number of blank templates set up by activity (manuscript paper, worksheets and handouts, matching different materials, and flashcards).

If you want still additional help, ideas, and starters, choose Type of Material > Teaching and learning materials. You’ll want to limit your search, or loading the possibilities will take a long time. But from there, you can find all kinds of additional examples. Many of these come from the UK, so be prepared for English terminology and even UK-specific projects, but they’re still quite useful even if you’re American and tend not to call things “breves.”

Pick a category, and you’ll find other layouts that can be the basis of your own work, as well as some relatively generic materials that are useful to everyone.

Here’s what you’ll see as you dig into worksheets:

Pull up an example, and you’ll find something that you may be able to use as-is, or at least a template that could be useful for adapting to your own coursework.

There’s even a Circle of Fifths ready to go. (The only change you might need to make, depending on the part of the world in which you live, is to call it the Circle of Fourths!)

Other ideas?

This is a bit of a departure for CDM, but I know lots of you out there are producing notation for various reasons. I hope this was helpful, and if anyone wants to do a similar story for Finale or another tool, I’m happy to have it. Let us know what other tips you like or if you have additional questions.

Addendum

Having just done this workshop, it’s worth noting a couple of things I discovered.

First, Sibelius I see now has an option in Preferences to account for laptops that don’t have numeric keypads, making entry much easier (though I still prefer the numeric keypad layout):

Next, I was reminded that a lot of tricks use the Beam line type, which you’ll find in the Line dialog. Any old line will do, but this will look like your other beams. This way, you can manually draw in notations that the software itself may not recognize.

And it’s worth noting that a lot of beaming tricks can be accessed in one of two places:

1. Beam display in the Staff Type House Style (there’s a checkbox buried in there for forcing “horizontal beams,” alongside the options for hiding rests and such above)

2. Beam groups and beaming rules (including the ability to beam across rests) in the Time Signature dialog.

For Finale users, most of these basic strategies will translate to your notation tool of choice. Generally, Sibelius lets you select objects directly, whereas Finale uses specialized tools, selected by toolbar icons, for each job. That also means that when you’re using Finale, you may need to select the tool before you’re presented with variables related to that type of object, whereas Sibelius consolidates those settings under House Styles.

For instance, Finale edits the staff types via an item, accessed from its staff tool, called Define Staff Types. That dialog is very similar to the Staff Type and Instrument dialog above.

Ultimately, in fact, both Sibelius and Finale have a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings once you learn them, because fundamentally they do treat scores according to regular bars and barlines. Interestingly, Finale has the abilty to have independent time signatures on different staves, but it’s almost useless, because it still puts the barlines in the same place. (That is, both tools are limited in this respect.)

Avid, the parent company of music product makers Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, has decided to assert the brand of its mothership more aggressively. As near as I can tell, that means you won’t see the M-Audio, Digidesign, or Sibelius brand names any more – along with video maker Pinnacle. You’ll see, presumably, Avid Pro Tools? (Right now, you see the Digi site with an Avid banner across the top that says “Digidesign is Avid.” But that was true before, so I don’t really know what this exactly means.)

Avid has also unveiled a new logo made, cleverly, to look like transport buttons on video and audio equipment.

I have to say, I have extremely mixed feelings about this, for a number of reasons. And by mixed, I mean mixed – this could be really positive, or really … not. The good news is, having one brand and one brand strategy probably does make a whole lot of sense. The (potential) downside:

• Avid may be the weaker of the brands here. It’s known among video people, but not necessarily even beloved there. Digidesign and M-Audio, meanwhile, touch wider user bases, and have real resonance with musicians.
• Will combining video and audio products actually work? Will a single brand really help? Sony has tried to do just this, with less-than-stellar results – perhaps because the video, audio, pro music, and “consumer” music markets (and their many factions within those umbrellas) are so particular. Sony has much bigger brand recognition than Avid (understatement), but even that hasn’t really made products like Acid or Sound Forge or (for video) Vegas substantially more popular. It works for Apple, but that’s because people associate Apple’s products with the computers they buy – and, well, they’re Apple and normal rules don’t seem to apply.
• You can’t read the new logo. Sure, the triangles are clever, but you can’t actually read the letters. Also, aren’t old-school hardware transport buttons a bit dated in this day and age? I’m going to assume all of that gets sorted out in practice, so I’m not actually worried about this, but I did have to point it out.

On the other hand, Avid’s combination of Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, plus the Avid/Pinnacle stuff on the video side really is a whole heck of a lot of what the music and video production world is about, and that hasn’t been clear. So despite the caveats and dangers, there is potential here. It’s all in the details.

And more important than branding is how Avid relates to its customers, and how the company operates. If that goes right, the brand will respond.

The press release promises not just a new identity, but a “new strategy” and “a new operating model.” But it isn’t clear, yet, what that actually means in the real world, particularly on the audio end.

http://www.avid.com/us/pressroom/brand-identity.aspx

The press release isn’t terribly encouraging, though, as it immediately shifts to Avid-centric, ultra-high-end / pro video solutions. Those products are extremely important. It’s tough to know just how anyone could find a way to relate that to a person buying a $100 plastic MIDI controller at the other end of the market, so I don’t envy the job of the business folks at Avid. At the same time, I do believe it’s possible to run a business that covers that gamut.

I’m going to talk to the Avid folks about this next week to get a better understanding. But because I expect many pro audio folks will react similarly on first brush, I decided in the interest of bloggy disclosure to go ahead and publish my initial reaction.

Let us know your questions or thoughts, and I’ll pass them along to Digidesign/M-Audio Avid next week.

I know some people were wondering about this – it’s now official. Digidesign reports Pro Tools 8 is actually shipping now, with the integrated MIDI edit window, score notation editor (via recently-acquired Sibelius) right in the DAW, bundled instruments and synths, some amp simulation, “Elastic Pitch,” and additional insert slots.

None of this is huge news to users of competitive products, with the notable exception of Sibelius notation integration. I’m very keen to hear how people actually use that, because the score facilities in tools like Logic aren’t competitive with favored tools like Sibelius and Finale, in my experience. On the other hand, many people are perfectly happy keeping their scoring and audio editing workflows separate from one another – particularly if you’re using Pro Tools for audio editing and Sibelius to write that new string quartet. So as this ships, do let us know how you’re using it, or if it’s a non-starter.

So, what does it cost to upgrade?

Pro Tools HD 8 Upgrade: $249 US
Pro Tools LE/M-Powered Upgrade: $149 US
Pro Tools M-Powered Full Version: $299 US (for use with M-Audio audio interfaces)

If you bought Pro Tools systems or upgrades since October 3, the new release is (rightfully) free.

Of course, that still means you might still be tempted to just go buy one of the cheaper Mbox products with Pro Tools LE included. There are also upgrades for the Music and DV bundles.

Note compatibility: Vista SP1 (32-bit only, still no 64-bit) is supported, as is Mac OS X 10.5.5. 10.5.6 isn’t ready yet, and Vista requires Business or Ultimate, which as I said in the past I still find pretty odd given that Home Premium is basically identical from a support standpoint. (Digi’s choosing to be a bit literal with that.) On the other hand, only Leopard support is available, whereas on Windows XP Home and Professional remain supported with XP SP3.

Once this arrives, I’ll be curious to hear about you. I’m happy doing my work in SONAR and Live at the moment, so I don’t think I’d be a fair judge, but someone who uses Pro Tools daily would be. Be in touch.

Pro Tools 8 Shipping [News @ Digidesign.com]

Pro Tools 8 is up on Digidesign’s website. Rather than copy and paste their features, I’ll let you read. This may not shake you from your music making tool of choice, but it looks like it could be, at long last, the substantial refresh for Pro Tools users of that platform have been waiting for. I can quickly sum up the strategy (“strategies” and “tactics” being on the American political mind lately):

• Get all the instruments and effects in the box: Apple’s Logic Studio set the bar for this by first bundling lots of soundmakers,then cutting the price. Digidesign has been busy with their talented AIR group designing some very nice stuff, so this is a no-brainer. Updated: as readers note, you still don’t get a sampler as with EXS24 in Logic and now Dimension Pro in SONAR. Then again, you could add on your on own; is that really a deal breaker for folks?
• Fix the UI (conservatively): Without rocking the boat, obviously Pro Tools was long overdue for a fresh coat of paint and some enhancement.
• Beef up MIDI: This was long Pro Tools’ weak spot, perhaps because of its lineage as an originally audio-only product (the opposite of most of its rivals); MIDI seems to be better integrated with existing paradigms for editing
• Edit pitch more fluidly: AutoTune and the magical note-editing Melodyne are probably safe, but more fluid editing of audio pitches is making its way into audio software in general
• Integrate scoring: The fruits of Digi’s Sibelius acquisition, real, modern music notation is finally in a major DAW (not the dated, clunky implementations elsewhere). My only concern: I hope Sibelius continues to make progress as a dedicated notation tool, because having myself spent long hours over scores, a lot of composition happens outside software like Pro Tools for other reasons.

The notation feature, to me, is probably the biggest story. As a long-time Sibelius user and with some interesting composer contacts, I expect to look at how this works in some depth. Congratulations to Sibelius and Digidesign for pulling this off; I’ll be in touch.

Actually, let’s do better. I’m through really reviewing DAWs. You know why? If I used every DAW, I’d never get any music made. And, oddly, the process of even trying to review something as broad as a tool like Pro Tools just about short circuits any music logic anyway. So I’d rather build a network of gurus in each, and talk about actual music production rather than feature lists – the latter is the developer’s job, anyway. If you’re game and consider yourself an advanced user, get in touch. I’ll have more on organizing this soon.

In the meantime, Digi has posted some videos; free registration on their site required.

Pro Tools 8 Announcement + Demo Videos

Update: keep the comments coming. To me, the challenge all these tools face is that people are (naturally) entrenched in what they’re using. So, yes, it’s possible to say Pro Tools is playing “catch up,” but to play devil’s advocate, you could easily say the same about its competition. My preference remains for “native” hosts with their more flexible hardware and software support, and because personally I’m more creative in an Ableton Live or SONAR (or tracker!); that’s me. Digidesign sent out an open letter about promising interoperability. I’ll be interested to see what they mean, as I don’t immediately see that addressed in any way here. But certainly, I respect the utility of each of these tools to someone. The loyalty of those user bases is part of why progress tends to be incremental, not revolutionary. You have to serve their needs first.

With some software tools, less is more. When it comes to the complexity and breadth of music notation tools, though, more is often more, because everyone’s needs are different. If the “pro”, “high-end” tool happens to do exactly what you need to do efficiently and quickly, that’s the tool you’re most likely to use — even if your notation needs are “modest” in your own eyes. In other words, if you use only 10% of the capabilities of the tool, but everyone’s different 10% is included, you’ve got a winner. And that’s probably part of why two major rivals continue to dominate mindshare in notation, Finale and Sibelius. Finale is on an annual release schedule, compared to Sibelius’ semiannual appearances. 2007 is one of the years the two coincide, with releases shipping almost exactly simultaneously next month.

We took a first peek at what’s new in Sibelius 5: massive plug-in support, an ideas hub, and other enhancements. Here’s what’s doing in Finale 2008 (keeping in mind Finale spreads new features out across annual releases):

Audio recording: This is this year’s banner feature for Finale. You can now import audio and use that as a vocal track in playback or for transcriptions, something not present in any other dedicated notation tool. (Naturally, this is something you can do with a sequencer, but not a scoring-only app.) This wouldn’t be impossible in Sibelius, because Sibelius can import movie files, but Finale does show you the waveform on the score itself.

Single selection tool, better cut/copy/paste/insert: Finally, Finale does away with its confusing multiple selection tools, choosing instead a single selection tool that does everything, something Sibelius (and most other notation software) have always had. There’s also a new contextual menu that looks more like Sibelius’ classic menu, as well. Now, before you Finale fans start complaining, yes, I recognize Finale has some selection workflows that you may prefer to Sibelius. Sure enough, what Finale 2008 offers that Sibelius lacks is a new set of selection and pasteboard tools that makes it extremely easy to make selections from keyboard shortcuts and drop/adjust placement of inserted music. (See the selection and cut/copy/paste/insert overview.) Back when I did Sibelius trainings, this was a heavily-requested feature, and on first glance, I’d say Finale 2008 may have the superior implementation, though I’ll have to have a closer look. Given that moving notes around is really a big part of composing and arranging, this to me is far more important than plug-in support or audio recording. Sexy? No. Absolutely vital to your work? Probably.

Styles: Document Styles combine templates with various other assets and engraving settings. It’s quite a lot like Sibelius’ Engraving Rules and templates (heck, the style selection dialog box even looks similar), but it does appear to be more comprehensive than what either program has done in the past.

Mo Playback Features: 2008 expands on the Garritan sound library, and adds expanded human playback support. That’s a far cry from Sibelius 5’s integrated plug-in support, but Finale has more extensive integration of the sounds it already has, as far as playback features and whatnot. The implementation in Finale really is very, very detailed, so you’re more likely to hear little details of your score on playback. There’s new implementation with tools like Garritan’s Stradivarius violin.

Merge multiple scores: If this works as advertised, this could be a huge timesaver — composers working on big projects know exactly what I mean.

Vista compatibility.

The tight race between these tools continues. I am a little disappointed that we’re past the point of real revolutionary tools in actually scoring — the emphasis in both programs has shifted to usability tweaks and playback. Both tools tend to be really weak when it comes to getting off the “grid” of bars and staves and free-handing notation, which is important not only to avant-garde notations, but any user who wants to shift to more of a page layout/illustration software method of working. But for what they are, both tools continue to improve. Composers, arrangers, educators — feel free to chime in.

Sibelius 5 is a big upgrade to the notation tool, now part of Avid. The biggest change of all: real VST and Audio Unit plug-in support on Mac and Windows. This merging of audio software and scoring software has been a long time coming. We saw limited support in Finale, but Sibelius actually fully supports racks of VST and AU instruments and effects to use on your scores, integrating with the Sibelius mixer for playback control, and merging into groups for control of sections of your orchestra/ensemble. There’s even MIDI control: the Sib site says “… if you have an M-Audio keyboard you can use its own faders and transport buttons to control Sibelius’s playback.” Wow, terrific! (Um, I’m guessing that will work for any MIDI keyboard once you assign the proper controllers, not just M-Audio hardware — but still good news.)

In case you want out-of-the-box instruments and not just plug-ins, Sibelius now includes 2 GB of orchestral, band, and other instruments from Garritan and others.

Also new in this version:

Ideas Hub: This is a really interesting idea, perhaps acknowledging that people now often compose directly into notation software. Ideas Hub is a scrapbook of musical ideas you can sort and paste at will. There are also 2000 ready-made ideas included … which is, honestly, a little strange to think about. Hopefully someone out there will create a really insane, avant-garde piece using nothing but those snippets, played at impossible tempi, etc. “Preset ideas” aside, this feature could be really interesting — though it may not make me throw away my manuscript paper Moleskin.

Continuous score viewing (”Panorama”): The ability to view a score continuously rather than in page layout has long been a feature of Finale; Sibelius’ developers actually resisted implementing something similar, but apparently they’ve found a way to do it with which they’re now happy. The UI design here looks very nice; it’ll be interesting to see if people prefer this to scrolling around a page.

Easy cues / instrument changes: ‘Bout time. I had actually been one of the people pushing for real instrument changes, and wrote a lengthy explanation of how I thought it should work to the folks on the product side. I imagine I wasn’t alone: usually when you get a whole bunch of people requesting a particular implementation is when it happens. And enough of this “automatic cue” nonsense — writing cues should be copy and paste. In Sib 5, it is: “Just copy the music you want to appear in the cue, and choose Paste As Cue. Sibelius 5 does the rest for you.” Yup. That’s what I wanted.

New layout options: This is far less comprehensive than I had hoped, but it’s a start: custom margin pages for different pages, and some other layout tweaks. There are also new, more flexible tools for numbering bars, rehearsal marks, and pages — things that previously required some nasty workarounds.

Copy lyrics from text files. Again, ’bout time.

Plug-in undo. Okay, “’bout time” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Plug-ins now look actually useful.

Cluster notation! … basically, lots of other new early music / new music / theory notations and other small tweaks.

Universal Binary and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard support.

I’ll be meeting up with the Sibelius people next month here in New York and will be getting my hands on the software soon, so expect more details. Notation is digital music, too, after all, in the age of computers. Looks like lots of little tweaks, but in notation, it’s often the small changes that make the difference — the stuff that you’ve had to live with while scoring. It might not make the glossiest marketing materials, but it’s those timesavers that really make difference. (Remember when Sibelius finally fixed its broken tuplet notation? I think I wrote twice as much scored music that year.)

Anyone wanting to have a Finale vs. Sibelius debate in comments, go ahead. I’ll try to stay out of it.

What’s new in Sibelius 5 [Sibelius.com]

Vista Compatibility for Notation Products [Finale / SmartMusic customer support]
Windows Vista compatibility [Sibelius]

These links come via a promising new blog/podcast for music educators, Music Tech for Me.

Both Finale and Sibelius (and various other tools from SmartMusic and Sibelius for education) are listed as “compatible” with Vista. There’s even a promised update specific to Vista from Finale for the summer. The only hitch is User Account Control (UAC) for software like Sibelius under Vista. Fortunately, disabling UAC isn’t so bad.

As a quick recap, some applications may actually perform more smoothly under Vista. Cakewalk SONAR, for instance, has robust support for the new WaveRT audio system (if you have a PCI audio card that supports it) and MMCSS scheduling. Be aware, though, that those marginal improvements can be quickly erased by driver issues elsewhere in the system, which have a tendency to domino when it comes to both stability and performance.

We could debate this all day, so I’ll just say this: there are still a number of cases where you would “downgrade” (upgrade?) a new Vista computer to XP, even if it means ponying up for a boxed copy of XP, and as with any major OS update on any platform, I wouldn’t even think of installing without a backup and rollback plan to the previous OS. If you can, test on a dual-boot system; it’ll make uninstalling easier.

The most intriguing new feature is called “Send to Sibelius”, a single button that allows you to transfer music from the MIDI tracks in a Pro Tools project to Sibelius for notation. Before you get too excited, though, there’s nothing really unique here other than the button. According to a thread on Sibelius’ help forum (registration required), this feature only exports MIDI data and imports in Sibelius. That’s possible in every competing DAW. Frankly, I’m glad to hear this, because I’d rather see more interoperability between notation software and all music tools — we should get to choose our favorite tools, not have them chosen for us by large corporate owners (hello, Avid/Digidesign acquisition of Sibelius).

Other improvements actually turn out to be more significant — but this upgrade does cost:

1. Dynamic Transport: Run playback independent from the current selection.
2. Loop trim: Turns MIDI and audio regions into loops, and draw loops into tracks Acid-style. (Not new to users of some other programs, but nice nonetheless.)
3. Bar-locked MIDI regions: Yes, hello Ableton — and, well, quite a lot of other programs.
4. Create Click Track: This is a pretty good idea; I’m surprised others haven’t done it, as well, as it’s so easy to implement.
5. Interface customization: Store and recall window layouts, zoom toggle preferences, and track height, plus drag-and-drop plug-in settings.
6. Post production: More QuickTime video editing/export features, multi-channel field audio matching. Those of you using Pro Tools for post can tell me whether this matters to you or not.

Here’s what I really don’t understand: how much the upgrade costs. If you’re using HD 7.2, LE 7.x, or M-Powered, you’ll pay US$49 – $79, which seems like a lot for what are fairly small feature enhancements. True, competing products often charge more like $150 upgrades, but recent updates like SONAR 6, Cubase SX 4, Live 6, and DP 5 offered significantly bigger enhancements. And an HD 7.3 upgrade costs a whopping US$199. Weirdly, the best deal seems to be if you’re still stuck on LE 6.x, in which this only costs US$75. The phrase “Hold on to your hats” in the Pro Tools announcement seems just silly.

In fact, most of the upgrade seems centered around quantizing edit tools and regions to bars and beats, something that’s already been done quite nicely in other programs — with other significant features (integrated iZotope warping in SONAR, live performance looping in Ableton,etc.) that Pro Tools lacks. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t intend to review features on paper, partly because I’ve spent a lot of time using Pro Tools, and am now much happier using other software.

I know I haven’t exactly been earning points with Digidesign as it is, but I’m still baffled by the value proposition in a lot of cases. Those of you feeling the Pro Tools love, carry on.

Digidesign 7.3 Feature Details [Flash videos, specs on HD, LE, M-Powered versions]

Sibelius Software Ltd., maker of the popular Sibelius music notation software, has been acquired by Avid’s pro audio division, Digidesign, maker of Pro Tools. That means Sibelius joins M-Audio in industry-leading products in Digidesign’s portfolio. Here’s the official word from Sibelius co-creator/co-founder Ben Finn:

I’m delighted to inform you that Sibelius Software Ltd has been acquired by Digidesign, the audio division of Avid Technology Inc.
…

Digidesign has acquired Sibelius because of its strong brand and expertise in music education and its advanced notation technology, not to mention its loyal user base.

Day to day, there will be no major changes to the running of the business ­our existing management team remain in place, and we will continue to develop all our existing products as before. Looking forward, there will be new possibilities for linking Sibelius’s products with both Digidesign’s and M-Audio’s ranges of software and hardware solutions.

Other than that, there’s not much word on what this will actually mean. I’m always a little sad to see an independent company cease to be independent, but M-Audio has flourished under its ownership by Digidesign, and M-Audio employees have told me privately they’ve been able to retain a lot of their independent spirit. The team at Sibelius seem generally enthusiastic about this partnership, and just as Digi’s purchase of M-Audio demonstrated recognition for computer music accessories, the buyout of Sibelius represents real support for music notation products and music education.

The headline below really sums up the major part of the issue here, though, which is marketing reach:

Avid Acquires Sibelius, Expands Reach into Global Education Market [Sibelius Press Release]

What Price Sibelius? TradingMarkets reports the price of the deal at US$23 million. Note that, because Avid is a public corporation (ticker: AVID), you’ll see more information disclosed about factors like Sibelius market share. Sibelius was a private corporation.

The question on everyone’s minds, of course, is what this will mean for the products. “Linking” Sibelius software with Digidesign and M-Audio gear could mean simple bundles (think the G7 guitar product with an M-Audio interface, or the full Sibelius software with Pro Tools). Down the road, it might mean actual integration, like the Sibelius notation engine inside Pro Tools, or in lighter form, in M-Audio’s new entry-level Session product, both of which lack music notation facilities. (In comparison, competition from Logic Pro, Digital Performer, Cubase, and SONAR all have built-in notation features. Logic actually began its life as a notation tool.) Sibelius won’t confirm these possibilities now, of course; even if they would, I’m not sure they yet know.

My hope, of course, is that Digi/Avid follow the model of M-Audio, and keep focusing on products that can be used by everyone, and not just Pro Tools (or Session) users. But so far, there’s no indications otherwise; the primary impact for existing Sibelius users may be a company with greater resources for development.

Here’s the real question: will Sibelius move from England to sunny California? Time will tell. In the meantime, that “A part of Avid” logo sure seems to be showing up in a lot of places these days. (I know where it would fit under the CDM logo. Kidding.)

Now, I’ve gotten in trouble before when I’ve said Finale was blatantly copying its music notation rival Sibelius. But I don’t think anyone can argue with me this time. The major features in Sibelius 4: parts linked to full score, and integrated video support and film scoring features. The major features in Finale 2007, based on a marketing email I just got from Finale:

1. Parts linked to full score
2. Integrated video support and film scoring features
3. Intel Mac native support

Sounds familiar, huh? Now, honestly, these were really features that both packages would inevitably add, so I’m glad to see Finale continuing to level the playing field. And don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of other features that are unique to Finale; Finale users will want to read through the extensive feature list Finale just posted. Specifically, they continue to improve integration with Native Instruments Kontakt Player and Human Playback features. Unlike Sibelius, Finale can host a wide range of VST/AU plug-ins (all based on Kontakt); the feature works really well in Finale 2006 and is improved in 2007. But most importantly, I think copying is good, not bad. Many of the Sibelius and Finale users are fiercely loyal to their product; they have to be — composing is hard enough work as it is, and switching from one platform to another would be a big adjustment.

Bottom line: when rivals compete, users win. MakeMusic once didn’t even want to acknowledge that it was competing with Finale; as far as I know, they still don’t like to refer to “the competition” by name. They’re clearly aware of it. And their product has gotten a lot better as Sibelius matured. (Sibelius has improved a lot, too; I’ve been a Sibelius user since version 1.xx, and looking back, frankly, that version was pretty awful. 4.1 is a joy.)

I wholeheartedly endorse upgrading each product, with one caveat: back up your system and keep your old version handy. Your scores are too important to risk on any upgrade from any company. Case in point: a bug in the Finale 2006 installer for Mac (later fixed) could wipe out preferences. But, once you’ve backed up, sometimes the latest-and-greatest really can be the greatest.

The only real bad news? A few lines in my book are now out of date.