Sibelius Mass Edit Filtering – Change Triplets into Sextuplets

I frequently receive scores where tuplets are subdivided more than necessary for the time signature, like this passage in 2/4 time:

It would be great if there was a way to convert the full bars of triplets into sextuplets. There is a plugin in Sibelius called “Split or Join Tuplets” but this plugin is designed to split or join a single tuplet, not a whole passage of them.

However, I recently learned a cool edit filtering trick from Sibelius power user Wim Hoogewerf that allows you to convert an extended passage of triplets to sextuplets. I thought I would share it with you. Check this out:

First, you’ll need an available blank staff that you can temporarily copy your edits into, if there isn’t already an adjacent blank staff. If I need to create a staff, I find it handy to go into the Instruments dialog, select the instrument I want to convert the tuplets for, and create a temporary “Extra Staff Below”.

Once the staff is created, select the first bar, type 2 on the numeric keypad to create a sixteenth rest, then make a sextuplet from the rests. You can now select that beat and use the R key to repeat these tuplet rests through the bar – then you can repeat the bar as many times as there are sextuplets in the passage.

If the entire passage is sextuplets, you can copy bars of sextuplet rests to fill out the passage very quickly. However, sometimes, the sextuplets in the passage will be broken up by other note values, or triplets that need to remain triplets:

For these bars, cut the material from the upper staff and paste it into the lower staff, like this:

Once you have only the triplets you want to convert to sextuplets in the upper staff, and the  sextuplet rests in the lower staff (optionally, with the bars that are to remain unchanged moved to the lower staff as well, as shown), the next step is to select the passage of triplets only in the top staff:

Now, go to the Advanced Filter. Choose Notes and Chords, and make sure that Normal notes are checked and that Tuplets are Unchecked:

 The resulting selection will be the notes only, without any of the tuplets:

At this point, very precisely and carefully, Alt-Click (Windows) or Option-Click (Mac) on the first note of the passage. The triplet notes will auto-fill into the sextuplet rests, cleverly avoiding the unchanged music:

To correct tuplet beams quickly and globally, use Reset Beam Groups. For shorter passages, you can also Cntrl-Click (Windows) or CMND-Click (Mac) to highlight the middle notes of the new tuplet and join them using the keypad:

Now all that remains is to select the entire passage from the lower staff, and copy it back up to the original staff…

…Then depending on whether you used an existing adjacent staff for your scratchpad or created a new staff, clear the scratchpad data or delete the scratch staff entirely.

That’s all there is to it. Remember you can do this for an extended passage all in one shot, which makes it very powerful. A few final thoughts:

Sometimes, the first beat of an extended triplet passage will begin with a rest. Just be sure to manually include that rest in the selection before you Alt-Click (Windows) or Option-Click (Mac) the passage to the lower sextuplet rests staff:

One final thing to keep in mind, especially for extended passages. Note that the slurs in the above example are not highlighted with the notes. If there are slurs, or staff attached text etc, you will need to either include those with the Advanced Filter selection or copy them in a second pass. (The articulations are considered part of the note for this operation and will travel with the copy and paste operation).

Here’s to your successful and swift editing in Sibelius.

~Robert