I'm starting to understand Sib 7, as I compose music for classical guitar. It's both very impressing and seriousely frustrating, as the learning process is indeed very very long.
I won't give up though :-).
1: how do I add fingering for left and right hand and how do I add the numbers of the strings?
2: How do I manually adjust the width of a bar? For example when a piece of music ends wit fewer bars on the last line Sib automatically stretch them all the way from left to right making them a lot longer than the others.
Can't I just select a fixed bar width for all the bars?
Sibelius does its best to automatically lay a page out well, but sometimes you need to Unlock Format, turn off any Auto-layout setting (Sibelius can get obsessed with having 4 bars per line) and use your judgement in inserting line breaks so as to best fill the page.
Fixed width bars are possible, but rarely desirable unless the rhythmic notation is identical in each bar.
You can look up all the terms I've uses in the manual. Also, have you discovered the Tutorial projects in File/Help? Very useful in finding out what Sibelius can do and how it does it.
1: There's a plug-in called "Add Fingering To Notes". You should really check that one out. It can add fingering as well as circled numbers for strings ...
2: Turn on "view handles". A little square shows to the right of each system. Drag it to left, to make the system shorter ...
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Erik Hagner, Denmark
MacBook5,1 - OS X 10.6.8
Sibelius 7.1.3
Finale 2010b r1
> 2: Turn on "view handles". A little square shows to the right of each system. Drag it to left, to make the system shorter ...
Indeed. But ONLY for the last stave, other than in exceptional circumstances. And only if you're happy with a short last line, not generally considered good practice.
BTW, you don't need to view the handle to use it, once you know where it is.
>>Can't I make finger notations in Sibelius as it is?
Yes, there is a text style called "fingering".
BUT – using the plug-in is also "as it is". If you don't know anything about plug-ins see pg. 112 in the reference – "Working with Plug-ins". It will save you so much time.
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Erik Hagner, Denmark
MacBook5,1 - OS X 10.6.8
Sibelius 7.1.3
Finale 2010b r1
I note that Add Fingering To Notes, and other plugins that use n onscreen keypad in the same way, suffered in the transition to Sibelius 7.
In Sibelius 6, where they were written, I used a tricky hack invented by Dave Foster to keep up with fast typing. In Sib 7, the code for list boxes changed internally and the hack no longer worked.
So for the forseeable future, which you can still use the plugin to add fingering in Sib 7, you must type more slowly - essentially wait until you see the number you type appear on the screen before typing another number, otherwise the text may never appear.
Even more unfortunately, the version of Add Fingering to Notes on the download page is not set up at all to use Sib 7 fonts for circled numbers, and has some other issues. I did an update to the plugin, but there really needs to be separate versions for Sib 6 and Sib 7.
I will try to get around to figuring out how to update the download page, but for now I suggest not using this plugin in Sib 7.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Bob
Just a user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 4 G RAM. Year 2014.
Add Fingering To Notes ships with Sib 7, so you do not need to install it (in category Text). It contains the fixes required to make it functional in Sib 7.
We have set the version on the download page to not appear to the Sib 7 plugin installer to avoid confusion; on the download page there is now a note saying this version should only be used in Sib 6.
But please be aware that, as I said above,
"So for the forseeable future, which you can still use the plugin to add fingering in Sib 7, you must type more slowly - essentially wait until you see the number you type appear on the screen before typing another number, otherwise the text may never appear."
Typing in a list box Sib 7 will try to match multiple numbers, so if you type "12" when you want to type "1" and "2", it will look for and not find 12, so the 2 numbers will not appear.
So you have to type slowly enough that it will recognize each character separately. Type a number and then wait until you see it on the screen before typing another one. Then it should work fine.
I tried for a while to get this to work in Sib 7, but the timing is a nightmare. The current behavior is the least bad I could make it. Even with the restrictions it is still the method I use for fingering.
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Bob
Just a user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 4 G RAM. Year 2014.
Dave's code was a clever scheme to trap the typed strings so they appeared to come into the plugin one digit at a time, and it was really cool. I probably would not have adopted the "keypad" style interface if not for his work.
The thing that really bothers me is that you can be looking at your paper and just typing along, not noticing that your 123 just disappeared. But at the moment what we have is the best I can figure out to do.
I really hate when data can be lost...
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Bob
Just a user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 4 G RAM. Year 2014.
I agree the plug-in is a great time saver, but there are just two things about it I don't like. First, if a note has an accidental, the plug-in always puts the fingering hidden underneath the accidental, so I have to go back and move it later. Secondly in chords the plug-in adds fingering starting with the top note and moving down, except that if two notes are in the same voice it adds fingering to the lower note first.
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Eric Crouch; Sibelius 7.5.1 user.
iMac 2.8GHz with 16GB RAM running Mavericks;
Retina MacBook Pro 2.6GHz with 16GB RAM running Mavericks.
http://www.guitarloot.org.uk
Actually, since this plugin ships with, and is now owned by Sibelius/Avid, I can't make any changes to it. You can request changes to the plugin on IdeaScale, but at best you might see a fix in the Sibelius 8 timeframe, whenever that might be.
(Previous message)
I can understand the problem with the accidentals - when I wrote the plugin there was no good way to tell if a note had a visible accidental, so there was not much I could do about it.
As of Sib 7, a plugin can see the visibility of accidentals, so it might be possible to shift the fingering to avoid the accidental in Sib 7 or later. I will think about that.
I don't understand the second problem with 2 voices. Could you please post (or email me) a score that shows that problem, and explain what you would prefer it to do?
Thanks,
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Bob
Just a user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 4 G RAM. Year 2014.
Hi all
Thanks a lot for the great help.
I've got the update to 7.1 and I've found the plug in, but I think I need some kind of manual.
It's a very slow tool as I use it now and I have to open and close it all the time is I want to make changes. Can't I jus mark a note and add a finger? Do I have to go through them all og select all? First for left hand, then for right hand, then for string number?
In Guitar Pro it's very simple: you get an image of two hands, mark the notes and select.
I'm sure there is a simple soultion I have overlooked. Manuals on youtube are old.
Hi again
I spend another hour or two with fingering again today.
I get the fingerings, and with a little manual tweaking in the right places. Great.
But how do I work with it if I want the plugin to stay open and just select notes as I want to. If for example I want to add fingering to a note I forgot. Why do I have to open and close the plugin every time?
It's really making seconds into minutes as it is now.
I'm almost there. When I have added fingering I guess I'm through all I need to know to write my music in Sibelius. It has taken more than 30 hours to create two minutes of music... I hope the next piece will be faster :-)
You do not need the plugin at all to enter fingering, just create Fingering text in the Text pane. You can do that at any time, but note that the positioning of the text will probably need to be adjusted.
This is why the plugin was written. It lets you put the fingering text beside the notes.
The plugin needs to be used after you enter the notes, not while you are entering them. This is just the nature of plugins. You cannot leave it open while entering notes. But once the notes are entered, it will follow any notes in the selection, which is usually helpful.
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Bob
Just a user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 4 G RAM. Year 2014.
In addition to the Add Fingering To Notes plugin, the Add Circled Number Symbols To Notes plugin is also very helpful for classical guitar notation. Works similarly. They both are huge time savers.