Anyone use Sibelius?

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RolandRoland Frets: 8590
For years I’ve been using Power TAB Editor for scoring guitar music. It’s migrated happily from XP to Windows 10. Increasingly I find myself scoring guitar, bass, sax and keys for the band. PTE is not ideal for scoring keys and wind instruments, and has very poor playback capabilities for judging how it sounds. So I’m wondering about Sibelius, particularly the cheap Sibelius First version. Does any one have experience of Sibelius and could offer advice?
Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
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Comments

  • guitarfishbayguitarfishbay Frets: 7953
    edited November 2017
    I have a reallllly old version of it on CD, I haven’t used in about 10 years. But it’s good for scoring, IIRC it’ll tell you if you’re writing beyond the range of an instrument, not sure what current sounds are like
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  • stratman3142stratman3142 Frets: 2177
    edited November 2017
    I use Sibelius 8 the full version. I took  out an annual subscription and pay £17.90 per month. You could start by just taking out a monthly subscription. That's a bit more expensive (at about £22.80 per month) but you can pay when you want to use it. It will also allow you to find out whether you like it.

    You might want to consider Guitar Pro 7, which I also use. I find it best for just guitar stuff but it lacks the flexibility of Sibelius when it comes to overall band charts combining notes and chord slash symbols.

    It's not a competition.
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  • JalapenoJalapeno Frets: 6378
    I have the student edition (in lieu of the discontinued G7) tbh if I knew what I was doing, blank chart paper and a fine felt tip would probably be quicker - no doubt midi keyboard input is far quicker than mouse & keyboard. It is pretty good at guitar transposing, I've done a few guitar/tab charts and I like the results - but takes forever.

    Need to ensure the version you get will allow sufficient parts if your arranging charts for a whole band. Full blown Sibelius is still pretty pricey (ISTR)
    Imagine something sharp and witty here ......

    Feedback
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  • I had the Acorn RISC PC version until recently when the hard disk failed. There were things that didn't work, such as saving a music file in MIDI format, but I found it workable and a useful tool. If anyone knows who can resurrect a dead disk drive out of an Acorn RISC PC pleez let me know, if only to let me print off all the music I've got in there so that it isn't lost for good.
    "Working" software has only unobserved bugs. (Parroty Error: Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!)
    Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
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  • stratman3142stratman3142 Frets: 2177
    edited November 2017
    I've got a lot invested in Sibelius having generated masses of charts with it over the years. Starting afresh, it might be worth checking out Musescore, which is free.

    https://musescore.org/en

    It's not a competition.
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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 972
    I've got a lot invested in Sibelius having generated masses of charts with it over the years. Starting afresh, it might be worth checking out Musescore, which is free.

    https://musescore.org/en

    Looks good. Cheers!
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  • RolandRoland Frets: 8590
    For those who are interested, I’m one song in with Musescore. So far it’s done everything I’ve asked of it.
    Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
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  • stratman3142stratman3142 Frets: 2177
    edited November 2017
    Roland said:
    For those who are interested, I’m one song in with Musescore. So far it’s done everything I’ve asked of it.
    That's good to know. Longer term I might move to Musescore from Sibelius because, based on a brief play with it, I think it will probably do what I need.
    It's not a competition.
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  • I use the student version of Sibelius 6 and its really good for what I need it for, as a tutor I create all my tabs for songs and exercises using Sibelius and its neat and tidy. I pretty much had to figure out how to use it slowly as I used it but seeing a I use it every week I know most of the functions now.
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  • thingthing Frets: 469
    As above I use it for doing lesson preps. I've used it for years and it does what it says on the tin. I'm sure there are other competent programs out there but I've no complaints with Sib.
    This is absurd.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.  It warrants combat.
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  • I used to use Sibelius 6, quite some time ago now so can't quite remember why but I tried out Finale instead and switched pretty quickly. I think it may have been because of layout... I think it was because I found it hard to be able to arrange text images and such as I wanted to, I was using Sibelius just to score but then started teaching and needed to be able to to maybe have one bar of music off the side with writing next to it and a diagram somewhere else and as far as I remember it wasn't possible in Sibelius or at least was difficult, whereas Finale lets you manipulate it however you want allot easier.
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  • stratman3142stratman3142 Frets: 2177
    edited December 2017
    ReaGeorge said:
    I used to use Sibelius 6, quite some time ago now so can't quite remember why but I tried out Finale instead and switched pretty quickly. I think it may have been because of layout... I think it was because I found it hard to be able to arrange text images and such as I wanted to, I was using Sibelius just to score but then started teaching and needed to be able to to maybe have one bar of music off the side with writing next to it and a diagram somewhere else and as far as I remember it wasn't possible in Sibelius or at least was difficult, whereas Finale lets you manipulate it however you want allot easier.
    Oddly I had the opposite experience, although that was using Finale many many years ago. I found Sibelius more intuitive (and a bit more like doing stuff in Word), but I suppose that depends on what you're used to.

    I've spend quite a bit of time with Musescore (largely prompted by this thread) and (although not as powerful) I'm finding it does all (and probably more) than I need and is pretty simple to use. It's like Sibelius in many ways.  So I think I'll let my annual Sibelius subscription lapse when it ends early next year. If I need Sibelius I'll just go for an ad hoc monthly (instead of yearly) subscription and just pay for a month if/when I need it.

    The only disadvantage I've found with Musescore so far it that it doesn't appear to be possible to get low enough latency when using real-time (midi) keyboard input recording, but I tend not to use it in that way anyway. It's still possible to record step input from a midi keyboard.
    It's not a competition.
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  • stratman3142 said:

    Oddly I had the opposite experience, although that was using Finale many many years ago. I found Sibelius more intuitive (and a bit more like doing stuff in Word), but I suppose that depends on what you're used to.
    Hm interesting... 

    You're able to move staves around make them whatever size you want put them side by side and such?... I couldn't find even the possibility of being able to manipulate it in that way when I was using it, which made it pretty useless to me for making music lessons.. May have to check it out again if its been changed... It could also come down to personal preference. I'm actually using Finale 2012 so I wouldn't know what the most recent version is like.

    The thing now is even if I found something to work better how am I supposed to make the change when I have so much already written in my current software, I highly doubt they would be importable with all the formatting and such, can't imagine how many hours work it would be to rewrite everything :/ 

    If it aint broke ....
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