A solution to this problem would be useful to many music educators, who often present introductory music in fewer than five-line staffs, but want to acquaint students with the conventional symbols like repeat signs.
A: In Finale, moving the repeat dot locations is a simple matter of adjusting the vertical location for available “Top Repeat Dot” and “Bottom Repeat Dot” parameters in Staff Setup. However, while the method to achieve this in Sibelius is somewhat more circuitous, it is indeed quite possible, and in fact, once you’ve created the mechanism once, it is very fast to create in subsequent worksheets or even scores, via Export / Import House Style.
The workaround uses a pair of staves which have been dragged directly on top of one another; one staff displays the 2 staff lines and the notation, the other displays only the barlines.
Start by making a duplicate of the “Percussion [2 lines]” instrument. This will be the same as the regular “Percussion [2 lines]” instrument, with one crucial difference. We are going to hide its barlines.
Go into Edit Instruments, select “Percussion [2 lines] and then click the “New Instrument…” button. A dialog will pop up, asking you “Are you sure you want to create a new instrument based on “Percussion [2 lines]?” Click yes.
(You can also optionally force the initial barline at the left edge of the score to break at this location by unchecking “Initial barline” here.)
Next, we want to create an “overlay staff instrument” which will have nothing *but* the barlines and special barlines visible. Create a duplicate of the “Percussion [1 line]” instrument. Go into Edit Instruments, select “Percussion [1 line] and then click the “New Instrument…” button. A dialog will pop up, asking you “Are you sure you want to create a new instrument based on “Percussion [1 line]?” Click yes.
When the New Instrument dialog comes up, name it appropriately. I used “RPM [1 line, barlines only]”. Now, click the “Edit Staff Type” button. When the dialog opens, click the General button at the top and set the number of staff lines to zero. Make sure all of the checkboxes in the “Other Objects” section are unchecked. Now, set both of the “Extend” text fields in the Barlines section to “1”. Leave the “Initial barline” and “Barlines” checkboxes checked.
Next, select the Notes and Rests tab. In this dialog, locate the “Note Properties” section, and uncheck “Rhythms (stems, dots, ties, rests, etc.)” and also “Bar rests”. Actually, it’s ok to uncheck everything in the Note Properties section. The only thing we want to show in our modified 1-line staff are the single barlines, special barlines like the repeats, and the final barline. OK the “Staff Type” dialog, and then the “Edit Instrument” dialog.
(The hard work is done. At this point, you can save your worksheet example file as a Manuscript Paper, or export these new Instrument definitions in a House Style, so you can bring them into other documents quickly.)
Add these two new instruments to your worksheet, with the “Percussion [2 lines, no barlines]” above the “Perc [2 line repeat source]”. OK the dialog.
You’ll want to enter music into the 2 – line staff before doing the next step, to avoid entering music into an “invisible” staff.
Finally, after entering the notation, drag your “1 staff, barlines only” staff right up inside the modified 2-line percussion staff until it won’t move any further north. It will be aligned correctly. Again, it’s important to wait until the note entry is completed before overlaying the barlines staff, otherwise, you’ll be entering invisible notes in an invisible staff!
One advantage of this method over using font characters or symbols to achieve this graphically, is that your file will play back correctly, with repeats.
That’s it! That’s all there is to it.
for Anne Carley
Thank so much! I really appreciate this guidance, Robert.
You’re very welcome, Anne – any time there is no direct feature to achieve something in Sibelius, as in this case, it usually makes for a fun and interesting tutorial subject. Thanks for the question!
~robert