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Make a New Instrument or Text Style Available to All Your Scores in Sibelius

In Sibelius, new text styles, line styles, symbols, noteheads, and instruments are available only in the score in which they are first defined. This gives you the flexibility to make custom definitions without affecting existing scores.

You may, however, want to have a new style or instrument appear in another score, or even in all your new scores. Sibelius allows you to export a house style from the score containing the definitions you wish to share, and then import that house style into other scores. Those scores will now contain the new definitions.

You can also import a house style into manuscript paper files, which are used as templates for new scores, and any scores you create that use those manuscript papers will inherit the definitions from the house style.

This article explains how to import a house style into one or more manuscript paper files.

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L.V. Symbols in Sibelius (Laissez vibrer) – Several Solutions

Laissez vibrer [Fr.] allow to sound, do not damp.

 

sib-vilnai-LV-1
from Ned Rorem’s Flute Trio

Laissez vibrer, or L.V. indications such as the one pictured above, are common notation practice. Instead of writing out a series of notes or chords together for what might be a long duration, the player is simply instructed, via a tie and the abbreviated ‘l.v.’ text, to let the note(s) ring out for as long as they would sound.

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Incorporate a time signature into a line of text in Sibelius

Q: My question is about tempo changes. I’m copying handwritten parts to Sibelius so musicians can easily read what’s written, and there is a tempo change that states, among other things, that the music is to have a 12/8 feel, where the 12 is above the 8, no slash, just like you’d see in a time signature. Is there a way to do this in Sibelius or am I stuck writing writing out “12/8” just as you see it here?

A: Yes, absolutely. First of all, Sibelius 6 (and 7) have a text style called “Time Signatures (one staff only)” which allows you to place a regular looking time signature as text anywhere you want, independent of their normal staff location(s). This text style is located here:

  • Sibelius 6 : Create > Text > Other Staff Text > Time Signatures (one staff only)
  • Sibelius 7 : Text Tab > Styles Gallery > Time Signatures (special) > Time Signatures (one staff only)

But you can also create a new text style which will allow you to display a time signature as part of a line of text, like this:


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Creating Fractions & Other Symbols in Finale & Sibelius using Unicode

U·ni·code
noun /ˈyo͞oniˌkōd/

An international encoding standard for use with different languages and scripts, by which each letter, digit, or symbol is assigned a unique numeric value that applies across different platforms and programs.

More recent versions of Finale and Sibelius both feature Unicode font support. Among other things, this means a number of new symbols useful for music notation are now readily available in addition to the 256 “regular” characters we’ve always had access to. This cross – application Unicode support represents an important step for digital music preparation, as we not only have access to the comprehensive set of accented and diacritical characters used in Latin based languages, but we can now enter the text and symbols for titles, credits, lyrics and directives in non-Latin based languages such as Russian and Chinese.

One useful type of symbol sometimes used in music scores not built in to the Sibelius Word Menus or the Finale Expressions Selection Dialog in Finale are fractions.  Without Unicode, fractions need to be displayed as two numbers with a slash between them, e.g. “1/2”. Directives such as “½ section trem.” or “Slow ¼ tone bends” or “trill ½” appear frequently in modern scores, for instance, so it is great to finally be able to display these properly and easily in both Finale and Sibelius.

On the PC, you should be able to type the most common fractions directly into either Sibelius 7 or later or Finale 2012 or later using ALT codes. Hold down the ALT key, type 0188 on the numeric keypad, and then release the ALT key to insert the symbol ¼. To insert the symbol ½, use the character code 0189. To insert the symbol ¾, use 0190.

Unfortunately, there are no designated keystrokes for fractions on a Mac, and if you are like me, you may have trouble remembering obscure ALT codes, anyway.

The good news is that with Unicode support, you now can simply copy and paste these characters into your music, and recall them again quickly at any time. It just takes a couple of minutes to set up, and from then on, they’ll always be there when you need them.

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Sibelius – How to type in Harp Pedal Markings As Text

Q: “In Sibelius, I have notated the starting and ending notes of a gliss which is in C minor. I tried the Add Harp Pedal Diagrams plugin, but since I’m not displaying enough pitches at this point in the score to outline the C minor tonality, I can’t get it to work. I would just  like to manually type in a harp pedal marking for C minor as text into Sibelius. How can I do this?”

A: To indicate the pedal changes at the start of a piece or new section, there are two standard conventions:

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Creating and using Text Wildcards in Sibelius

Sibelius has a very useful feature called Text Wildcards. Wildcards are a type of placeholder text that are sometimes referred to as Tokens or Text Inserts. These wildcards use the information from the fields in File>(Score)Info  to display text on the page.

One advantage of using Text Wildcards is that you only need to type the actual text into the Sibelius file in one location – File>(Score)Info. Anywhere the wildcard appears, the text is dynamically updated instantly.

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