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Steinberg snatches up former Sibelius Development Team

November 9, 2012 — Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha Corp.☆) announced today that it is establishing a new R&D center in London, United Kingdom, for the purpose of developing a new professional level music notation and composition application, which will sit alongside Steinberg’s other products.

Ben Timms will be the head of Steinberg’s new London-based scoring division, which includes Daniel Spreadbury and most of the former Sibelius UK team.

This is not only great news for these former Avid employees who were dumped by Avid recently in a “profits first” restructuring, but potentially huge news for the future of music notation software. End users benefit from increased competition in music notation software development, and you can bet these boys are going to bring it.

The London-based office will begin operation in the middle of November this year.

  1. Steinberg Press Release (1)
  2. Steinberg Press Release (2)
  3. Pro Sound News Europe
  4. Keeping Score: Spreadbury Speaks on Sibelius Team Transition

☆ Yamaha Corporation reached an agreement to acquire 100% of the common stock of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, including Steinberg’s U.S. sales operations, through closed competitive bidding on December 20, 2004.)

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Vertical Spacing of Staves and Systems in Finale

Q: I’m working on an orchestral score in Finale, and I’m having some trouble with the vertical staff spacing. Is there something like the Space Systems evenly tool, but for staves within a system? Finale’s leaving a big margin on the bottom! Thanks!

With orchestral scores, one system very often represents a full page of music, and so in this case, we want to adjust the vertical positioning between the staves themselves, rather than the distance between systems to create the proper look. Fortunately, Finale offers some great tools for this purpose.

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Expressive Rubato to Massive Grooves : Ensemble Playback That Sings & Swings

Subtle differences in the timing, volume and duration of phrases are what gives music its “feel” – to inject more tension or weight; to make it more emotional and exciting. Veteran live performers and session musicians sometimes refer to playing “in the pocket”, which means playing every note in the exact sweet spot for each beat in every bar.

When a conductor coaxes a particularly emotional rubato from an orchestra, or a rhythm section lays down a massive groove, causing the listener’s body to move involuntarily, two things are certain. The performers have coalesced in a tangible way that is undefinable; and, whatever *it* is, everyone is doing it together.

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Finale : Using Linked Parts, Finalescript & House Styles for Commercial Parts

Back in 2011, I posted Making Efficient Use of Linked Parts In Finale which outlined a few of the advantages of using Linked Parts in Finale vs. the “old school” method of individual part extraction, or pasting parts into a separate template file.

Recently, a conversation with an industry colleague made me realize that even 6 years after the introduction of Linked Parts in Finale, some of the very best veteran professional music copyists working in LA and elsewhere still are not taking advantage of Finale’s Managed Parts feature.

more >> “Finale : Using Linked Parts, Finalescript & House Styles for Commercial Parts”

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Realization Reversed : from Performance to the Page

Western music notation is a fixed set of rules devised for expressing something that, by nature, is not fixed. Our current notation system has been culled and pruned over the last several centuries from numerous musical symbols and instructions down to the current set.

Professional musicians not only understand the meaning of these, but are able to interpret them with appropriate variation and nuance based on context.

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Finale : Feathered Beams in Cross-Staff Notation

Feathered Beams in Finale are straightforward to create in a single staff (see this tutorial).

However, creating feathered beams in a grand staff with cross-staff notation is a little more involved, so it seems like an excellent topic.

In this tutorial, we’ll examine several methods for creating cross-staff feathered beaming in Finale. Thanks to Peter Thomsen, Luke Dahn and Zuill for their contributions to this tutorial, and a shout out to Alexander Blank at Indiana University for bringing us all together on the OF NOTE blog!

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