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Losing the Parts Window in Sibelius 7

One of the most powerful features in Sibelius 6 was the Parts Window. The Sibelius 6 Parts Window acted as a central hub for everything to do with part creation. From one location within the program, you could perform a comprehensive list of tasks related to parts:

  1. Set the page size, margins, staff size, page breaks and other layout rules for all parts, one part, or any subset of parts (Multi Part Appearance).
  2. Import a house style to quickly change the look of one part, all parts, or any subset of parts.
  3. Print one part, all parts, or any subset of parts
  4. Save a PDF file of one part, all parts, or any subset of parts.

While Sibelius 7 hasn’t lost any of these capabilities, Multi-Part Appearance, Import House Style, PDF creation and printing have all been moved away from the v6 centralized Parts Hub design onto separate operations in the Ribbon UI. Even though these operations are clearly labeled in the various tabs on the Ribbon, the above parts editing / printing processes are no longer consolidated into one location, which by definition means that workflow for Parts preparation isn’t as efficient. This was obviously a conscious decision by Sibelius – a tradeoff in workflow efficiency for clarity in the UI.

For professional level users, the new design has a further subtle, but extremely important limitation. Sibelius 7 requires that in order to make any house style changes to any Part, it must first be OPEN. For instance, instead of simply selecting individual part names from the Parts Window list to make house style edits, you must now select either “Current Part”, “All Parts” and “All Open Parts”.  This means that to perform a House Style related edit for a specific group of parts without affecting all the parts, you must first close any parts you don’t want affected, then open the parts you *do* want affected before you can actually apply Multi Part Appearance or House Style edits to just the string parts.

By comparison, in Sibelius 6, this was only two steps, done right in the Parts Window: (1) CNTRL-Click (CMND-Click) the individual Parts you want to edit. (2) use Multi Part Appearance or Import House Style to change formatting for the selected parts only, in many cases, without even having the parts  open.

That said, the casual Sibelius user will probably never get deep enough into Sibelius to experience the drop in efficiency here. If you’ve never done anything to change the “look” of the built-in Manuscript Papers, you have nothing to worry about.

 

In summary, while the Ribbon UI design makes it easier for new users to understand Sibelius while encouraging experimentation and  exploration, some users, particularly professional music copyists working under tight deadlines, may find the less centralized workflow for parts inefficient compared to the Parts Window in Sibelius 6. Consider it a tradeoff for all the improvements.

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Displaying Different Octaves In Score and Parts in Finale Part 1

Q: “I’m working on a Violin Concerto in Finale 2011. The violinist who is playing the concerto prefers to have all the high passages written out in pitch (rather than using ottava notation).  However, I would like to use ottava notation In the score. How to I show the notes at pitch in the part, and at 8vb with the ottava lines in the score?”

A: While this is a little different than creating a part for an octave transposing instrument, we’ll use similar techniques to create it. In FInale 2012 and earlier, we’ll create and use an octave transposing Staff Style for this, in combination with ottava lines which are visible in the score, and hidden in the part. Here’s how:

more >> “Displaying Different Octaves In Score and Parts in Finale Part 1”

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Combining Two or More Instruments Into a Single Part in Sibelius

In Sibelius, some instruments, such as piano or harp, automatically appear as a grand staff part. However, many times, it is desirable to create a part which combines two or more staves from the score into a single part.

For instance, you might want to combine Violin 1 and Violin 2 onto the same part, or perhaps you have several percussion instruments that should appear in a percussion part score, or an SATB chorus that you’d like all on the same part. Here’s how: more >> “Combining Two or More Instruments Into a Single Part in Sibelius”

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Gaps Before Codas for Score and Parts in Sibelius

“I would like to add a gap between bars for a Coda in my score and parts in Sibelius, but the gap is only showing up in the parts. How can I make the split system show up in the parts as well?”

sib-gap-before-bar

In Sibelius 6, you must manually split the multirest in the same bar as the Split System in order for a Coda (e.g. System split) gap to show up in all the parts.

In Sibelius 7, the Split Multirest is automatically added when you select Split System, so normally, these will show up automatically in the parts this way.

However, note that in either Sibelius 6 or Sibelius 7, you also need to have “Keep gaps before codas (that have split multirests)” checked in the Layout Tab of the Multiple Part Appearance dialog for this to work properly.

In Sibelius 7, go to the Parts tab, Part Appearance and select the Layout tab. Check “Keep gaps before codas (that have split multirests)”

In Sibelius 6, select the Multi Part Appearance button in the Parts Window, and select the Layout tab. Check “Keep gaps before codas (that have split multirests)”

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Making Efficient Use of Linked Parts In Finale

It baffles me that there are still a number of commercial Music Copying Houses in LA, New York and elsewhere that are still not taking advantage of the benefits of Finale’s integrated score and parts. These copyists are still using an old method from the mid 1990’s, where a master parts template file is created, and each part is pasted into the template one at a time, then saved off as individual, separate files.

From a housekeeping standpoint alone, the difference between managing 1 master parts file or 30 individual files is a no brainer. Printing is also much slower, as each individual file must be opened up and printed vs. being able to take advantage of the batch printing option in recent versions of Finale. Factor in any sort of last minute edits, particularly those where notes from one staff are to be copied into another, or changes to the form of the piece, and it quickly becomes obvious that a few minutes to learn a technique which integrates all the parts into a single file would be invaluable.

Let’s take a look…

more >> “Making Efficient Use of Linked Parts In Finale”