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Keep it Together in Finale or Sibelius : Score & Parts in the same file
In the early days of Finale and Sibelius, individual parts were generated from a master score via a painful and aptly named process referred to as “Extraction”. The programs would dutifully export twenty or thirty cryptically named parts files onto your Desktop which would then need to be cleaned up and individually prepared for printing. Any subsequent changes to the score *also* required edits to one or more (or all) respective parts.
Today, parts are integrated within the score and the content is intelligently married. Sibelius calls its parts integration feature “Dynamic Parts“, while Finale labels their feature “Linked Parts“. In general, having scores and parts linked in one master file has proven to be a godsend, but there are some caveats.
Woodwind and brass instruments aren’t polyphonic. With some notable quality control exceptions in currently published music, common practice is to have one instrument per staff in the parts. Ideally, woodwind and brass players should not be required to locate their lines from within a divisi part.
At the same time, the better organized an orchestral score is, the more readable it becomes. Generally scores with fewer systems are easier to read. Quite often, the requirement is for pairs of instruments appearing on a single staff wherever possible: Clarinet 1 and 2 on a single staff, Horn 1 and 3 on a single staff and so on. For this tutorial, we’ll start with divisi or chorded staves in the score, and create individual parts from these.
Let’s take a look at how each program currently integrates score and parts, and some ways we can make Finale and Sibelius best work to our advantage despite any limitations.
Finale Tip : Quickly Delete Duplicate Unison Notes in the Same Layer
A PRIME NON-SEQUITUR
Jack Butler: “Gonna rip these walls out and, uh, of course re-wire it.”
Ron Richardson: “Yeah, you gonna make it all 220?”
Jack Butler: “Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes.”
from “Mr. Mom”, 1983
Sometimes, after certain editing operations, or when importing a midi file, you’ll wind up with doubled unison notes with shared stems in a single layer:
While there are some cases where doubled unison notes (on the same stem / layer) are appropriate, it’s more common to see either stems up / stems down divisi in two Layers, or single noteheads, with technique text indicating “a2″ throughout the particular unison passage, like this:
Fortunately, there are several solutions for eliminating duplicate unison notes appearing in the same Layer in Finale:
- Finale’s Explode Music Tool
- TGTOOLS Process Extracted Parts Plugin
- JW Chord Manager . . . Plugin
Let’s take a look at how each works :
Sibelius : Special Barlines, Multirests & Default Double Barlines
Q: I have a Sibelius file which is a series of different Effects for strings. I have separated each of these effects with a double barline. However, in any parts which are resting, the multirests are not showing up, and I would like them to. Can you help me solve the problem?
A: Common practice indicates that typically, wherever there is a double bar, it is indicating a new section, rehearsal mark, key change or some other significant event in the music. In your situation, it does make sense to use double bars as a “divider” between each effect; however, Sibelius is breaking these as if they were new sections.
SPECIAL BARLINES
In Sibelius, barlines other than the Default are called “Special” barlines. Any time you overlay a new barline over an existing one, it creates a new “Special” barline which will break multimeasure rests. Here is the list:
- Start Repeat
- End Repeat
- Double
- Dashed
- Final
- Invisible
- Normal
- Tick
- Short
- Between Staves
Where are they located?
- SIBELIUS 6 : Create Menu > Barline
- SIBELIUS 7 : Notations Tab > Barline button in the Common Group
Note in particular number 7 on the list which is “Normal”. It is possible to get into a situation where you actually convert the Default barline to a “Special” barline. It’s actually hard to spot, because there is no visual indication that anything is out of the ordinary.
If you overlay a normal barline on a Default “Normal” barline, it will still “look” like a Normal barline, but will, in fact, become a “Special” barline, which will break a multirest.
While other factors may be in play, a likely solution is to “clear” the “Special” barline information, which will return all of the “Normal” barlines to the proper default barline.
Enter and Edit Dynamics as Music text characters in Sibelius
I see a lot of music that has dynamics entered in Times New Roman Italic or Times New Roman Italic Bold:
There is something not quite right about this “engraved” looking bar of music, right? The Opus Text Std Music text font would look more “correct” for the dynamics. However, even though this font is assigned as the Music Text Font in many of the Sibelius Manuscript Papers, you may find your dynamics look like the above, rather than:
Let’s walk through a couple of different ways to enter these dynamic text symbols, and importantly, let’s take a look at how to fix them after the fact, using the Change Dynamics plugin in Sibelius: