I received this email on the topic of multi-rests being split incorrectly by text from UK musician and composer Kit Marsden, and thought I would share our exchange.
Dear Robert,
I am a professional musician in the UK, and I work with Sibelius a lot in various applications (I run Sibelius 6 on a MacBook Pro, if that’s relevant!); I usually find that I can achieve what I want to in the program, but I have had an issue for some time now with multirests being split by text when I really don’t want them to be!
As a drummer and percussionist, a lot of the charts I create will have lots of bars rest – but I still want to denote the sections in the track, to make things easier to follow. If the drums don’t come in until, say, the second chorus, I won’t just leave an 8-bar intro, a 32-bar verse, a 16-bar chorus, and another 8-bar verse as one huge multirest block of 64 bars! It’s much more helpful, obviously, to have each section clearly demarcated through the use of double barlines, so the multirests follow the structure of the tune.
So far, so good… But I also usually want to add some text at the start of each new section, so that I (or anyone else playing from my charts!) know where I am in the tune at a glance. This will either be the names of the sections (so, in the example I gave above, ‘Verse 1’ in boxed text at the start of Bar 9), or some sort of indication of what’s happening in the music at that point (maybe ‘Vox In’ at Bar 9 where the verse starts, ‘Horns’ at the start of the chorus section, etc.) to make the chart easier to follow.
However, adding text over the multirests like this tends to split the rests, and Sibelius treats the text as an ‘object’ which needs its own bar – so, I end up with one bar with a whole bar rest in it, with ‘Verse 1’ in boxed text over it, and then a seven bar multirest. This isn’t what I want, and it looks messy and amateurish! Sibelius is such a powerful program, there is usually a way to do just about anything that you can think you might want to do – and I can usually find a way to make it work, but in this case, I’m feeling a little stuck! Are you able to help out, if you know of a way to do this?
Many thanks,
Kit Marsden
www.manek.org.uk
Kit,
Thanks for your great question. In the most straightforward case, if you make sure to always attach the text to beat one of the first bar that starts the multi rest after a double bar line or a section, the rests should break properly. You can use the Inspector and the info bar at the bottom of the main window in v7 or Properties in v6 to make sure that things are attached to the first bar and beat of the section correctly. You may be surprised at how often, text in a 4/4 piece winds up attached to “beat 4.x”.
If you only want to see the text in one part, such as a drum part, use staff attached, rather than system text.
There *are* certain types of text in Sibelius which remain problematic, because of the way in which they are supposed to display. An example of this is DS text which is designed to be right aligned at the end of a section. Now if that occurs on the last bar of an 8 bar phrase, even though it is right aligned, it is still attached to the last bar of the section, and as such, will break the multi rest incorrectly so you have 7 bars of multi rest, a break and then the bar with the text in it.
Unfortunately, this one is a design oversight within Sibelius. You can get around this at least visually by attaching the DS to beat one of the following bar / section (e.g. after your double bar line which breaks the rest anyway), and then using X offset of the text in the score to place it in the previous bar visually (note you will have to make adjustments in both the score and parts independently).
In the parts, you can just drag the text, even up to a previous system for correct display, but in the score you must use X offset to insure the proper attachment point). A caveat with this workaround is that any defined text that facilitates playback of form will be affected, so your score won’t play the form back correctly after moving the attachment point of the text, but should at least look correct.
Best wishes,
Robert
Control Multirest Break Points in Sibelius
Sibelius Tip: Reason #4 Multi Measure Rests Break Incorrectly in Parts
Has this oversight been addressed in Sibelius 8? As an engraver, this work around has been effective, but disconcerting. It adds to the time and energy needed to make the project readable quickly by musicians. That can take a toll on productivity.
Unfortunately, this remains the same in Sibelius 8 as far as I know. About the only thing I can recommend is to contact Sibelius Support: http://www.sibelius.com/helpcenter/contact.html – Hopefully, it is something that will be addressed.
~robert