# What I need in Sibelius ...



## BlackDorito (Apr 18, 2019)

This might be an offshoot of the 'Consolidated Sibelius Tips' above ...

If you are one of those lucky-unfortunate souls like myself whose workflow revolves around notation and you want to drive VI libraries that expressly indicate that they are designed for live-recording and traditional DAWs and don't work well with notation programs, you may have some of these same issues. If so, perhaps you have solutions or workarounds ... pure commiseration is welcome too.

Basic needs to make Sibelius work better driving Spitfire, OT and Cinematic Studio:

Controller data
easy importation and placement of (perhaps live-recorded) MIDI CC data as Staff Text
perhaps direct overdub recording of such CC data onto a Staff


Humanization
randomize Start Time for a selection of notes
randomize velocity for a selection of notes ('short' notes)


Dictionary
allow multiple CCs in a definition, e.g. "~C1,100 ~C11,100"
allow a Note (keyswitch) in a definition. Optionally allow it to be 'chased'
[the above are mechanisms needed for when Sibelius score markings do not properly correspond to VI library control parameters]


Sound ID system - _needs to be totally revamped_
not flexible enough for modern VI libraries.
requires a level of (soundset) programming that no-one wants to do ... even when trying to implement simple single-note articulations like Staccato
is supposed to work with track-per-artic (i.e. MIDI channel-per-artic) templates but doesn't seem to chase controller values when switching to a different articulation
Notating percussion is particularly hard ... e.g. indicating that tremolo lines as a note marking should switch the corresponding note to be played, not to automatically generate multiple notes.


General
Sibelius gets very slow on longer scores
The first Play within Sibelius always starts at the position of the Play caret, not where you indicate it should start - very annoying
Trying to alter the note-generation parameters for Trills - e.g. to get a percussive instrument to alternate between two notes that are a whole tone apart, does not work. This is a bug.


Some of these issues could perhaps be fixed with plug-ins or more recent versions (I'm on Sibelius 8) - I'm interested in people's experience. 

One could also argue that Sibelius' design center is for score layout, printing parts, etc. .... sure, that's why I started using it so many years ago. Now I'm asking it to be a DAW ... don't make me export everything and move over to that wonderful tool called Reaper. [This more general topic has been covered in many previous threads]

Anyone have any thoughts on the above issues?

[I didn't add VSL to the above list of VI libs because they have a fairly serviceable soundset for Sibelius - bravo]


----------



## BlackDorito (Apr 24, 2019)

I'm sensing this topic area has been all played out in previous threads .. or perhaps my issues are obscure. 

Here is what I've determined myself:

*Controller data* (.. e.g. for brass swells, string fades):
the "Add CC Changes" plug-in works quite well if you want a simple ramp

Santiago Barx's GMT plug-in ($25) works well to draw a multi-point curve
drawing/recording any CC curve in any app and then importing into Sibelius can be done by opening the resultant .MID file in Sibelius, then opening the actual score you are working on as a separate file, and using copy/paste (Home-Filter-StaffText-Copy). I now have started a Sibelius score that is nothing but a library of modwheel curves that I can use for any score
the workflow for all the above is much faster by creating shortcuts (L=draw a line; C=invoke the CC plug-in; T=select Staff Text; Z=invoke GMT plug-in)
Live Recording directly in Sibelius (i.e. overdub existing notes in the score with CC data to control them) - I did not find this feature compelling, due to latency and minimal UI, especially when compared to Reaper, Cubase or any DAW. I might use this in the future for longer multi-bar passages needing a gradual crescendo or espressivo - but I might use GMT as well.

*Humanization*
random start times: there are pay-for Sibelius plug-ins that will do this at www.themusictranscriber.com. Haven't tried them because my main interest is simply adjusting local repeated notes to avoid the machine-gun effect - for this, the GMT plug-in piano roll works fine
random velocities: again, mainly to avoid the machine-gun effect within a localized set of notes: Sibelius's Play - Live Playback - Velocities feature does the trick to graphically adjust velocities (make sure to set Live Velocities in the Inspector). GMT does it as well.

*Dictionary / Sound ID system*
Sibelius has done an admirable job for playback, given their design center is for notation/printing - but this is an area where I may need to explore Dorico. I have created a soundset myself (for Spitfire Joby Burgess) and as a programmer I can tell you the whole environment for producing these things is a software engineering disaster. Flexibility to allow users to control their modern VI libraries was simply not built in.

I think Sibelius could do a few things (perhaps simple things) to improve their dictionary and give users a bit more control over the linkage between staves and instruments, and also the linkage between score markings and VI parameters - I'm using Sibelius 8.7.0. Will they? On their forums, the majority of comments have to do with notation, not playback. Also, as part of Avid and their pay-for support model, I feel more disconnected from the product team than from any other vendor - Spitfire, VSL, OT ... all the rest answer emails without throwing up a pay wall.

I believe there are a set of users who want to exploit all the features of their VI libraries directly from notation programs ... I'm going to keep slugging away within Sibelius, hoping they come up with a meaningful update .. but I'm going to explore Dorico as well.


----------



## joebaggan (Apr 26, 2019)

It may be more useful to get on the Dorico bandwagon for this kind of thing, as that seems to be the future. While not there yet, Steinberg has Cubase too and it's likely that Dorico will continue to develop better features for playback from VI's. While Sib is a good notation program, it's a legacy codebase and I haven't seen any meaningful new features/development from it in many years. And I'm not banking on Avid, that's for sure.


----------



## BlackDorito (Apr 26, 2019)

Yep ... you're probably right. Downloading the Dorico 30-day trial right now.


----------

