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From:Sibelius , Sibelius Software Ltd. ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#5574 |
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Sibelius excels, 2007-01-03
This was purchased as a gift for a musician. He says that it is excellent software for composers.
6 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
Great all around composing tool, 2006-11-29
I have been a Sibelius user for several years, and find it a very useful tool for composition and classroom instruction. The relatively new feature of being able to quickly save your composition as a WAV file makes it easy to give students take home practice CDs (using sampled sounds not midi tone).
Another useful new feature is the ability to score a soundtrack to a movie while never leaving Sibelius. You can directly import many movie file formats and add music and sound effects easily.
I highly recommend this program, and make sure you get the latest version for all the new features.
50 of 51 customers found the following review helpful:
Excellent new version, 2006-01-08
Notation software seems to be one of those things where there are two main players, like Microsoft and Apple or PhotoShop and Quark. Sibelius and Finale are the big two here. I've used both (for my own writing and for part-time teaching), but for the last couple of years I've pretty just used Sibelius, and got the Sibelius 4 upgrade in December.
Both programs are sophisticated and can write just about anything you want. I found Finale quite tricky to learn, and though they've worked hard at trying to make it as usable as Sibelius, it still catches me out (e.g. when I try editing my old scores) - quite complicated menus and dialog boxes, confusing tools, etc. If you don't use Finale frequently, you just forget how to do things. (I do, anyway.)
Sibelius on the other hand didn't take me long to pick up, and overall I just find I get things done quicker and with less head-scratching, which is why it's ended up being my main composing tool.
The new version, Sibelius 4, is quite something. The coolest thing it has is 'dynamic' instrument parts - instead of having to extract parts once you've finished the score, Sibelius now automatically creates them and keeps them updated whenever you change anything. (If you change something in one of the parts, it evens updates the score.) For serious composing & arranging, where you need to go back and make revisions, it's indispensible. It's one of those revolutionary changes, like getting broadband. Now that I've used this for a few weeks, I would never go back to Sibelius 3 or indeed to Finale.
Also Sibelius 4 lets you write to video, which I don't think other notation programs do. For movie & TV work or just for fun, it's pretty cool again - the video plays in a window and is synced up with the notation, with automatic timings in the score etc.
Plus various other new things I haven't checked out fully yet - some very impressive orchestral sounds you can add, stuff for creating educational worksheets, etc. So overall, I'd say if you already have Sibelius (an older version), you won't regret the upgrade (if nothing else, for the parts handling). And if you don't have Sibelius, I'd recommend you check it out - it's...quite cool. Really.
95 of 95 customers found the following review helpful:
 Comparison with Finale, 2005-11-09
I'm a Finale user who was tempted by Sibelius's competitive upgrade offer. After using Sibelius 4 for several months, I can offer some observations in how it compares with Finale. As an initial one, both programs are excellent and neither has serious flaws.
(1) Sibelius is simpler to learn and to use than Finale, and will probably be a quicker tool for inputting scores for most people. Sibelius is not, however, completely simple and intuitive. You will need to set aside time for reading the intro manual in order to get any use at all out of the program, and will likely refer to the thick full manual with regularity.
Its default settings print out a prettier score than Finale and are generally "correct." Both programs can produce beautiful scores and both come with a nice variety of fonts.
(2) Finale ultimately seems to offer more power and control, but at the expense of time. It seems to take longer in Finale to set up a final polished score than it does in Sibelius.
(3) Sibelius is packed with music-ed tools that would probably be great for students and teachers. (It should be emphasized that these tools don't get in the way for users who don't need them.)
(4) Both programs include play-back features, but neither can compare with a dedicated sequencer program.
The lite-version score-scanning software packaged with Sibelius is so limited as to be useless even as a demo. The lite sampler in Sibelius ("Kontakt Silver") contains a handful of instruments sufficient to demo the full program (available for purchase as an add-on). In this regard the sampler packaged with Finale (a version of Garritan Personal Orchestra) may offer a wider sound collection right out of the box, but users who want this in Sibelius can buy a compatible version of GPO, too.
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