Upgrade to Sibelius 5 or buy Finale?
May 25th, 2008 | By admin | Category: BlogSibelius 3 is driving me crazy! How did they get away with writing this software? A short list of pet peeves:
- There’s no playback window (ok, so that’s fixed with Sib 4)
- Give me scroll bars, please!! (fixed with Sib 5 I hear???) Every time I try to grab music to move from one page to another I accidently grab a stave and elongate a measure by about 4 inches. oops!
- There’s no way to move from the end to the beginning without having to scroll through the whole song (is there a shortcut I don’t know about?)
- Page layout view is difficult to use.
- When I put in an expression message for dynamics, it is automatically placed above the staff rather than below. Who’s ever read music with the dynamics above the staff? edit: doh! vocal scores!
- Difficult to grab things. I can click 5 times to try to select something, and it will select the thing next to it, but never the actual text I want! So frustrating! (Finale makes this easier by limiting what you can select based on what tool you are in)
- It is so annoying to accidently write music while I’m experimenting on the keyboard. I can press esc but that doesn’t always work the first time. (Once again Finale makes this easier by limiting what I can do based on what tool I am in)
- Takes 20 seconds to close
So why did I buy Sibelius? Cause I was a poor grad student, and at the time, it was cheaper than Finale. I figured I’d get a good software program and just make it work if I didn’t like it. Well now I have a job and I’m ready to invest in something that will make my life easier, not more difficult! But this post would not be complete without listing the good things about Sibelius 3…
- The arrange function – allows me to “explode” a piano reduction into 4 part harmony with ease! (does Finale do this?)
- I can filter the top note of a piano part and copy it and paste it into a trumpet (or other part)
- The nicest thing about Sib 3 is that when you click on a note and press Play, it starts playback right at that note. In Sib 4 you have to move the scroll bar (ugh!) to get where you want. I can’t seem to manage that real well.
So what do you think? Sibelius 5 or Finale?
Hi, I hope this will be helpful.
You wrote: “When I put in an expression message for dynamics, it is automatically placed above the staff rather than below. Who’s ever read music with the dynamics above the staff?”
Vocal music is usually written with the dynamic markings above the staff, since the area below the staff is usually cluttered with lyrics. (There’s a lot to know after 550 years of refinement in the art of music printing. I encourage all composers to get Kurt Stone’s /Music Notation In The Twentieth Century/.) Of course, you can put them wherever you want them, but the Sibelius default is correct.
If your dynamics are appearing above the staff on instrumental parts, you’ve probably somehow accidentally chosen a vocal House Style. One way to fix this is to go to House Style > Import House Style and then select one of the styles that is not for vocal works. Leave all the boxes checked and click OK, and your entire score will have the new appearance.
Most of the other “peeves” sound like a lack of comfort with the interface, shortcuts, etc. There are shortcuts for all of these things, and you can change them under Preferences.
I encourage you to spend some time with Sibelius before you dismiss it, even if you decide it isn’t your software of choice. I’ve talked to many people who prefer Sibelius, and some who prefer Finale, just as there are some people who enjoy using Macs and others who are more at home with Windows machines. I had used Finale for a number of years. I switched to Sibelius around 2002 and I’ve been very happy with that decision, but you may prefer something else entirely. (If you’ll be submitting scores for publication, check publisher guidelines; I’ve heard of publishers *only* accepting work created with Sibelius because it is more in line with industry standards of good layout.)
Best wishes making art and having fun with whatever tools you use.
Peace,
Mark