Page Layout – OF NOTE

06/23/201806/21/2018

Quick Tip: Inserting blank pages in Sibelius

Empty”placeholder” pages are sometimes useful to define the start of a new event, scene or movement in a score, or to facilitate good page turns.

To insert one or more blank pages, select the barline which precedes where you would like one or more blank pages to be inserted.

Now, choose the “Special Page Break” option from the Breaks group on the Layout tab:

(Prior to Sibelius 7 use Layout > Break > Special Page Breaks…)

Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut CMND-SHIFT-RETURN (Mac) or CNTRL-SHIFT-RETURN (Windows).

This opens up to the Special Page Break dialog, where you can specify how many pages you wish to insert.

Special Page Breaks apply specifically to the current part (or score) view. If you have blank pages that you would like to appear globally in the score and parts, create the break in the score, and check “Keep Other Special Page Breaks” in Multi Part Appearance.

Note: Special Page Breaks are only available in the Full version of Sibelius (now called Sibelius Ultimate).

A German version of this post („Leere Seiten einfügen in Sibelius”) is available here.

Karin Vadon is a classically trained musician, singer-songwriter and music copyist from Vienna, Austria who authors a german-language music notation blog for Sibelius and Dorico users.

06/16/201806/16/2018

Positioning of page numbers, headers and footers in Sibelius

Q: In my Sibelius score, the page numbers always alternate between top right and top left corner. And I can only choose between “inside edge“ and “outside edge“ for a footer, which has the similar effect of alternating positions. How can I change this so that page numbers are always aligned top right to the page and footers are always in the bottom right corner?

A: From the Text tab, Click the “Edit Text Styles“ arrow-button in the Styles group. When the dialog opens, choose Page Numbers and click Edit…

Now the System Text Style dialog opens, where you can set the page numbers to align “Right“ in the Horizontal Position tab.

You can reposition a “Footer (outside edge)” in the same way.

A German version of this post („Position von Seitenzahlen und Kopf- und Fußzeilen in Sibelius”) is available here.

Karin Vadon is a classically trained musician, singer-songwriter and music copyist from Vienna, Austria who authors a german-language music notation blog for Sibelius and Dorico users.

06/09/201806/06/2018

Appending scores in Sibelius

Q: How can I join several movements of a piece, which I wrote as individual Sibelius scores, together as a single Sibelius document?

A: Sibelius provides an “Append” feature, found in the File Tab:

Click the Append button.

…and choose the score you want to append in the dialog which opens.

more >> “Appending scores in Sibelius”

05/03/201705/04/2017

Sibelius : Vertical Alignment of Tempo Indications With Rehearsal Marks

Q: In Sibelius, is it possible to have boxed Rehearsal marks which are automatically vertically aligned with coincident changes of tempo? For example, I have entered the boxed rehearsal letter “A” followed by a tempo marking; “a tempo”. By default, Sibelius aligns the tempo text with the bottom of the enclosure, but I want the tempo text to be centered with the whole height of the boxed rehearsal mark.

A: You’ve touched on two interesting topics related to vertical text alignment here. The first relates to general settings and positioning, and the second, as it concerns Sibelius, relates to collision avoidance. Let’s take a look…

more >> “Sibelius : Vertical Alignment of Tempo Indications With Rehearsal Marks”

04/30/201705/02/2017

Sibelius : Change the page size of all of your parts in one edit

There is a quick way to change the page size of all of your parts in one edit operation within Sibelius. Here’s how:

more >> “Sibelius : Change the page size of all of your parts in one edit”

04/06/201704/25/2017

Balancing Part Layouts for Better Readability

This post explores a couple of ways to redistribute your music notation on the page for better balance and readability. Regardless of the notation program use, hopefully these tips will help you improve the presentation of your music, and help your musicians in the process.

more >> “Balancing Part Layouts for Better Readability”

10/24/201610/24/2016

Sibelius Gap Before Bar & Brackets Appearing in Middle of Page

Q: I’m having some technical problems with a Sibelius score. I’m trying to reformat the score layout at the oboe section (pages 53-55). There is a weird thing where system brackets appear in middle of score instead of just at the left edge.

A: The brackets are caused by changing the amount of space before one or more bars. Sibelius calls this distance (normally zero) “Gap Before Bar” and it is useful to indent a the first system of a piece or movement or to create a space for a Coda in the middle of a system. Unfortunately, it is possible to add these gaps without realizing it.

In your example file, these Gaps Before Bar were a very, very small amount (.72 spaces), and if I had to guess, were very likely previously at system starts where they would be extremely hard to notice.

However, when you attempted to reformat the page layout, the “extra” brackets became visible since these bars were no longer at the starts of systems.

To correct this, select the individual bar following the mid-system bracket, then use the Inspector (Properties in Sibelius versions before v7) to reset the positioning for GAP BEFORE BAR to zero.

gap-before-bar-v6

The bracket should disappear and now you can reformat the score without the mid-system brackets.

That’s all there is to it!

~robert