Entry Workflow for Piano Music in Sibelius 7

ENTERING NOTES, TEXT, LINES AND SYMBOLS

Having a consistent workflow routine when engraving a piano score can increase efficiency and accuracy. This guide provides the series of steps I follow to stay on track.

Sibelius has a very good piano template which will produce a nice looking piano score. Of course, you can always adjust the layout, and change various house style elements, but for now, let’s start with provided New Score Manuscript Paper (template).

Start by setting the score up with the proper title, composer, meter and key.

In the right hand staff (treble clef), insert tempo and metronome text.
Select a measure and use CONTROL+ALT+T (Windows) COMMAND+OPTION+T (Mac)

Choose from the contextual menu with the mouse, or type the text directly.

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NOTE INPUT

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Select the bar you want to start entering notes into and choose the rhythmic value for the first note on the keypad using the numeric keyboard. To avoid note input problems when the first note is a dotted note, make it a habit to hit the rest key (0-key on the numeric keyboard) first and then the note value. Play the pitches on your midi keyboard.

To input a tuplet: 

Select the bar or note in the score and choose the note value on the keypad. Type COMMAND (Mac) or CONTROL (Windows) +tuplet value. Sibelius will go back to normal input mode after the last tuplet note. If you have multiple tuplets, enter them quickly using the “Sticky Tuplets” feature by typing SHIFT-ALT-K (Windows) or SHIFT-OPT-K (Mac).

Using more than one voice in a staff. 

Quite often, piano music contains more than one voice in a staff. This can be as simple as a melody played by the 1st voice while the 2nd voice plays chords:

Or more complex as 2 independent voices as in a fugue by Bach:

To insert a 2nd voice in the staff, make sure nothing in the score is selected and choose the 2nd voice and note value from the keypad:

Click the position in the staff where the note has to start and insert the notes the usual way. When finished with the second voice notes, hit the ESC key to return to the 1st voice entry mode.

Using more than one voice in a staff will frequently create situations where you have rests notated like this:

The solution here is to hide the 2nd voice rest by selecting it and choosing Hide or Show from the mouse menu:

An issue that can arise when using 2 voices on one staff is the collision of the rests from the 2nd voice with the notes of the 1st voice:

Sibelius doesn’t adjust these automatically, so we will have to do some manual tweaking here. You’ll need to move the 2nd voice rests down manually, so they don’t collide any longer with the 1st voice.

You can do this by selecting them one by one with the mouse and using the arrows keys to move them down:

If you have a lot colliding rests, you can do the following:

• Select the bars
• From the Home menu in the Ribbon, choose Filters/voice 2:

With the bar still selected, choose from the Home menu in the Ribbon, Filters/rests:

 

Now you can use the arrow keys to move the rests of the 2nd voice out of the way all at once.

If any of the rests appear too low after the global adjustment, you will have to move these back up into place separately. In cases where Sibelius doesn’t provide the correct placement automatically, this is faster than manually adjusting everything independently.

For repeated figures, rather than entering the same bars or motifs over and over again, after selecting the source motif, press the keystroke “R” to repeat a selection in the same staff. The notes will appear immediately after the selected group. To quickly paste the selection into another location, use ALT+mouse click (Windows) or OPTION+mouse click (Mac).

Other useful keyboard shortcuts to change pitches are:

• ARROW UP or down to change pitches diatonically.
• SHIFT+PAGE UP / PAGE DOWN to change pitches chromatically.
• COMMAND+ARROW UP / DOWN to change pitches one octave up or down.
• ALT+SHIFT+N (Windows) or OPTION+SHIFT+N (Mac) to change the pitches only while everything else stays intact. (re-pitching). Select the first note (a dotted vertical line shows), type the key shortcut, then play the new pitches on your midi keyboard. Press ESC to exit this mode.

When a clef change is needed, press “Q” on the keyboard, then choose the clef from the popup gallery. Click in the bar where you want the clef to change. Use the same approach for changing the meter (press “T”) or key signature (press “K”). If you select a region before  applying the clef change, the clef change will revert at the end of the selection area.

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PROOFREAD!

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Compare the Sibelius score with the original hand written manuscript

This is a very important part of the engraving process! You will be surprised how many little mistakes you will still find. Before going any further, check the note pitches, the enharmonic spelling (e.g. E-flat or D-sharp) and rhythms. Selected notes are changed to their enharmonic opposite by pressing the RETURN key.

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NOTE EFFECTS AND SYMBOLS

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Insert note effects like glissando, trills, octave lines, mordents and fermati.

Glissandi, trills and octave lines: 

Select a note or region and press “L” on the keyboard. Choose the effect from the menu:

 

Mordents: 

Select the note and choose the symbol from the Symbols palette in the Notations menu in the Ribbon:

Fermati: 

Select the note and choose the fermata from the 4th tab on the keypad:

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ADD ARTICULATIONS

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Select a note or notes, then choose the articulation from the 1st tab on the keypad:

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ADD SLURS

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Select a note or phrase and press “S” on your keyboard. You can expand the slur over more notes by hitting the spacebar or decrease it over fewer notes with Shift+Spacebar.

By default, Sibelius will avoid collisions between accidentals and slurs:

If desired, you can fine tune how specific slurs appear. Select the slur and open the Inspector (right mouse click). Uncheck the “Avoid collisions under arc” check box:

The slur will now bisect the accidental. In many cases, this looks more natural than the collision avoidance.

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INSERT DYNAMICS AND HAIRPINS

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Dynamic expressions text (pp, p, mf etc) is always placed under the staff except for vocal staves. To place dynamics correctly between the braced piano grand staff, they need to be attached below the right hand (upper) staff.

Select a note and type COMMAND+E (Mac) or CNTRL-E (Windows). The flashing cursor will appear below the right hand staff. Keep holding the modifier key down (CMND / CNTRL) and type the dynamic expression you need (this produces the correct music text font). You can also choose the various dynamic symbols from the Contextual menu:

To insert dynamic text like espressivo, appassionata, dolce etc., select a note and type COMMAND+E (Mac) or CNTRL-E (Windows). For these, be sure to release the modifier before typing directly in the score:

To combine a dynamic expression with dynamic text, select a note and type COMMAND+E (Mac) or CNTRL-E (Windows). Keep holding the CMND key down and type the dynamic expression, now let go of the CMND key and type the remainder of the text instruction normally. You can edit the text by selecting it and hitting the return key:

To insert hairpins, select a note or region and then type “H” (hairpin crescendo) or SHIFT+H (hairpin decrescendo). The hairpin will appear in the proper location, under the selected note or region:

You can expand the hairpin’s duration by hitting the spacebar or decrease it with Shift+Spacebar.

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INSERT TECHNIQUE TEXT

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Techniques, such as solo, leggiero, legato, sotto voce, etc. are always placed above the staff:

Select the note and type COMMAND+T (Mac) or CONTROL+T (Windows). Now type directly in the score.

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INSERT TEMPO CHANGES

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Tempo changes like accel, rit. and rall. are selected from the Lines dialog. These System Lines not only provide the proper System Text Style, but facilitate playback within Sibelius. Select the bars where the changes appear and press “L” to open the Lines window, choose from the rit. and accel. menu the change you need:

 You can lengthen or shorten the dotted line by dragging the handle at the right side of the line with the mouse:

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OPTIMIZE

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Now that we are finished with the right hand staff, let’s optimize the note spacing. Select the complete score with CMND+A (Mac) or CONTROL+A (Windows), and choose Optimize from the Staff Spacing Group in the Layout tab:

With the staves still selected,  choose Reset Note Spacing from the Reset Notes Group of the Appearance tab:

Left hand staff (bass clef)

Transcribing the left hand staff is the same as for the right hand, but some steps are skipped. Here is the workflow:

1. Note input
2. Compare the Sibelius score with the hand written score
3. Insert articulations
4. Insert slurs
5. Insert the left hand dynamics if needed, in the same way as for the right hand, only now select the left hand staff instead. The dynamics will be placed under the staff:

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INSERT PEDAL TEXT AND / OR LINES

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For creating the pedal lines, select bar in the left hand staff where you want to start the pedal line and press “L” to open the Lines gallery.

You can search in the dialog box for the correct lines or choose Pedalling from the All menu:

The pedal text is a normal expression text style. Select the note where you want to enter the text and type COMMAND+E (Mac) or CONTROL+E (Windows). Right-click the mouse to select the pedal text from the menu. You can also type the text, but this will not create the traditional pedal style notation:

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OPTIMIZE

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Select the complete score with CMND+A (Mac) or CONTROL+A (Windows), and choose from the Layout tab in the menu Optimize Staff Spacing. Keep the score selected and choose from the Appearance tab in the menu Reset Note Spacing.

The next step will be to adjust the layout. Don’t forget to save your work!!

 

 

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Biography (b. 1963) 

André van Haren was born in 1963 in Holland and currently lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. He studied piano with Robert Groslot and composition with Henk Alkema. In 1990 he received a Bachelor Degree in Music in Classical Piano and Composition from the Conservatory in Utrecht, The Netherlands. His main instrument is the piano. He has been composing and arranging music for various ensembles including piano, choir, chamber ensembles and orchestra for over sixteen years.