Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:07 pm
Several years ago (2016) I purchased Sibelius in an attempt to be able to "compose" music by just sitting at my Hauptwerk and playing. Sibelius was able to transcribe my keystrokes into notes on the staff. You were able to play back what you composed, but not on Hauptwerk. Sibelius used one of its internal instruments (piano, harpsichord). I fought with it for years and gave up. It was easier to just hand write the music. My intention was to just improvise and have the sheet music appear on the screen ( which it did) but with several annoying issues.
Regrettably, Sibelius requires a huge learning curve as nothing is user friendly, and complex, cumbersome and looks nothing like traditional keyboard bass/Treble clef notation. I'm sure it is possible to get it right but I wasn't able to do it. As with most of these programs, zero help is available. You can of course find several Sibelius "experts" that will charge $125 to $200/hr just to help you work through Sibelius.
Most of Sibelius dealt with instruments that only required one staff.
One of the difficulties that I was never able to resolve, was the ability to have the written music ( as you play)divide between the Bass and Treble clef. All keyboard music without exception ( except maybe Virginal music from the 1500's) splits the Bass and Treble clef at Middle C. Not so with Sibelius. Everything ended up on the bass or treble clef. Just picture what your treble clef music would look like starting from the bottom C of the organ. Also, for some odd reason, even if you specified the time signature of the note ( i.e. whole note, half, quarter, sixteenth etc.) and you held it one nanosecond longer than a sixteenth note, it would expressitself on paper as a sixteenth note plus ten or fiftten 1/128th notes added.