I've been a Sibelius user since version 1.4 for Windows. I still have Sib 5.2, but haven't used it in a few years--the regular job crowded composition out of my life. I am now wanting to get back into composing. So I'm faced with the choice of re-learning (and probably upgrading) Sibelius, or perhaps moving on to something else. I am not pleased with what's happened to Sibelius in the last few years. And I especially do not want to get into the trap of renting software that will stop working if I stop paying.
My focus will be on chamber music (piano, winds, strings), songs and choral music for real people to play and sing. I don't need avant-garde notation, though I do change meter here and there. I don't care if my score and parts meet the most exacting engraver's standards, as long as they are easy to read and play from. Facile note entry, cut/copy/paste, transpose and alter is important. Decent MIDI playback is important for aural proofing and giving a prospective performer an idea of the music, but it doesn't have to fool anyone into thinking it's the Berlin Philharmonic. I just want the software to work. I don't want to spend endless hours and days tweaking the software instead of composing.
Sticking with Sibelius is probably the easiest option, but I must admit that I'm looking at both MuseScore and Notion as leaner alternatives that would do the job. This article gave me pause: http://www.georgehess.net/notation-wars/
This may be the wrong place to ask about this, but I don't know any other. If you know of a more appropriate venue, please let me know.
Thanks!
--Peter Klein
http://www.sonatina.org/index.htm // pklein at threshinc.com
Sib 5.2, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Dell Optiplex 980, 8 GB RAM
One thing to realize about the new subscription mode is that Sibelius does not stop working if you stop paying. You simply continue using what you have with no future updates.
I suggest you pay one upgrade fee, which will get you up to date with Sibelius including one further year's updates. (The policy is now to release frequent incremental updates rather than one big one every two years.) The current version, 8.2 has a major problem - Reset Design removes your choice of enharmonic note spellings - but we're told this is fixed in 8.3. This will not commit you to any future payment and, if you let your subscription lapse, your final installation will continue working.
New things are on the horizon. Treat this advice as a single-payment insurance scheme. The same decision will resurface in a year's time.
> > I suggest you pay one upgrade fee
>
> ... but check out Musescore first. If it does all you need, put your credit card back in your wallet.
>
> --
> Rob
>
> Sib 4.1, Windows 10.
Indeed. The assumption was that you NEED Sibelius, either for its features or its compatibility with your existing portfolio of scores. Obviously if you don't need it, and there's a cheaper alternative, use it.
I would test out Musescore first (and any other music composition program that looks promising and is free or has a trial) and download the latest vs. of Sibelius and test them both.
Open-source doesn't necessarily mean "cheap looking" or "not a good program" as Reaper (recording program) is open-source and one of my favorite programs. Each program does something a little better or different so I'll use Garageband and Reaper in the same day.
I was briefly a tester for Notion and was excited that it could be used to move scores between iPhone and computer and found Notion wouldn't load on my iPhone and that dissuaded me. I thought the playback sound was better in Sibelius.
Don't get a subscription to Sibelius if you decide to go that route as a Subscription is
$24.99 a month or $239 a year (a discount of $19.99/month). (This is for short-term use in my opinion.)
Rather, upgrade for $89/yr.
I can say this about Sibelius. I switched to it in 2008 and find it one of the easiest programs to run with the some of the best support available here.
I am composing and arranging without having to stop and tweak the software, as you say, and when I've had an issue with Sibelius, it's always been solved here in a matter of hours or days.
My focus will be on chamber music (piano, winds, strings), songs and choral music for real people to play and sing. I don't need avant-garde notation, though I do change meter here and there. I don't care if my score and parts meet the most exacting engraver's standards, as long as they are easy to read and play from. Facile note entry, cut/copy/paste, transpose and alter is important.
Check. Intuitive interface and more or less standard, Ctrl-C/V for copy/paste etc...
Decent MIDI playback is important for aural proofing and giving a prospective performer an idea of the music, but it doesn't have to fool anyone into thinking it's the Berlin Philharmonic.
Check.
I just want the software to work. I don't want to spend endless hours and days tweaking the software instead of composing.
Check. Works for me. Had to reset the audio out once, but ditto that for Sibelius and every other program that uses sound sooner or later. Life with computers...
Some awesome features, not including the price: export to xml, pdf, ps, wav, flac, etc as easy as Save As and choosing the desired file format. Pretty nifty I say.
EDIT: A slight update: I had been using the older version 1.3 from the CentOS repositories until today, when I got curious and downloaded V2. Version 2 now uses the more standard Export feature instead of Save As to export audio and PDF etc... No real difference, still easy built in features, just a different menu option.
Peter - the "elephant in the room" that no-one has mentioned is the forthcoming Steinberg notation program, but, though you should be aware of it (and maybe you already are) it is important that you keep things firmly in perspective.
Firstly, the advice you've been given so far is excellent. Secondly, we know very little about the Steinberg program, but expectations are very high.
However, you must judge whether you want to hang on with what you've got, in the hope that Steinberg will be worth buying. Its price is of course unknown. It may be available later this year, possibly this summer.
If you decide to stick with Sibelius and upgrade you will find a lot has changed since version 5, most of it for the better. Like the others here, I suggest you spend the minimum if you go down this route.
Then there are the other programs.
You may wish to know that probably quite a few people here won't be spending any more money with Avid and will be pinning their hopes on the Steinberg program; if they have a fairly recent version of Sibelius that may be a more attractive option than it is for you.
I'm really not sure what I would do if I were in your position.
--
Chris Crawley (composer and horn-player) using Sibelius 7.1.3, NotePerformer, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Intel Core i7 3.30GHz, 64GB RAM, DacMagic 100
There's a lot of "ifs", "mays" and "probablys" there :-) And the general dislike for Avid and its commercial practices can make it difficult to focus on what Sibelius actually IS at the moment.
I would love to have access to Avid's sales records over the next couple of months. I suspect that most active Sibelius users will quietly pay up for a year's subscription, if only to stay in the game until the Steinberg program IS released, they can see if it suits them and how feasible it is to move their existing body of work across. Even if Steinberg is able to pull off the coup of releasing ahead of the Sibelius subscription deadline, there isn't really time to evaluate properly - and it will be a version 1.0 with all that implies.
Another "elephant in the room" is the fact that today, several years after Avid killed Sibelius development, a lot of the loudest shouters are still here - not on the Finale, MuseScore or LilyPond forums. Work out why.
"I suspect that most active Sibelius users will quietly pay up for a year's subscription, if only to stay in the game until the Steinberg program IS released, they can see if it suits them and how feasible it is to move their existing body of work across."
I suspect that is spot-on.
A situation of uncertainty will mean that many Sibelius users, particularly if they have a commercial involvement, will want to keep right up to date with Sibelius 8.3, 8.4 and beyond, for the time being.
We won't know how attractive a jump to Steinberg will be for some time after it's released.
As for the "shouters" here, quite clearly there is a love-hate relationship (love Sibelius, hate Avid) with the program. But few of us are prepared to let go yet.
The next twelve months could reveal a very different landscape and it will be very interesting to see how events unfold.
--
Chris Crawley (composer and horn-player) using Sibelius 7.1.3, NotePerformer, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Intel Core i7 3.30GHz, 64GB RAM, DacMagic 100
> Indeed. The assumption was that you NEED Sibelius, either for its features or its compatibility with your existing portfolio of scores.
If the OP has been away from notation software for "a few years" it's possible he hasn't noticed the existence of MusicXML, or the improvements in scanning technology if the old scores are in PDF format.
From what I see, importing old data to different software is becoming "not a problem" a lot faster than Sibelius is fixing the bugs that are still left over from Version 2.
But Joe Pearson @ Avid apparently wants this forum to degenerate into the same state of the MakeMusic ones - only Sibelius fanboys welcome.
> > Indeed. The assumption was that you NEED Sibelius, either for its features or its compatibility with your existing portfolio of scores.
>
> If the OP has been away from notation software for "a few years" it's possible he hasn't noticed the existence of MusicXML, or the improvements in scanning technology if the old scores are in PDF format.
>
> From what I see, importing old data to different software is becoming "not a problem" a lot faster than Sibelius is fixing the bugs that are still left over from Version 2.
>
> --
> Rob
>
> Sib 4.1, Windows 10.
So you'll be up for this job I have of transcribing a few hundred pages of PDF into Sibelius (or the notation program of your choice) at a nominal cost per page? So far, everyone seems to be costing it as quite a lot of work!
>quite clearly there is a love-hate relationship (love Sibelius, hate Avid) with the program
Yup.
On the other hand, had MuseScore been around (and me aware of it) when I first purchased Sibelius, I maybe wouldn't have bought in. For my needs, MuseScore is enough. The opportunity for enhanced playback features available in Sibelius is one benefit it provides, but how important advanced playback is to you, and how much you are willing to spend to obtain it, should be considered.
One major advantage to MuseScore is that it is cross platform, including Linux and even FreeBSD (and others). No need to keep around a Windows or Mac machine if you don't otherwise need one.
Thanks very much to all who replied, The issues are complex, but at least I've got a couple of months to decide.
I've been seriously investigating MuseScore. It actually is quite good. The main three things that come to mind that Sib has and MuseScore doesn't are real-time MIDI note entry, collision avoidance (aka "magnetic layout"), and some advanced playback features, such as realistic legato playback and direct support for VSTs. Even here, the first two are being worked on, and VSTs can be used via some intermediary software.
MusicXML provides a base "lingua franca" for porting much of a score's content between programs. There's a plug-in, conveniently provided by the Finale folks, which will enable my copy of Sibelius 5 to export my existing work-in-progress. So I'm not stuck, and neither are most other people.
There is some incentive to stay on board and shell out my 89 bucks--this time. But I can't see myself paying that every year for the rest of my life. Avid should be aware that they are not a large-scale virtual monopoly like MS or Adobe. And even there, some people have moved away from both Office and Photoshop in response to the "rent me" schemes. I'm not sure that it's a sound business strategy to rely on forced annual rental fees from the small core of professionals who absolutely can't change.
Unless one's workplace demands "the standard," there are perfectly good alternatives to the 800 pound gorillas. And tactics like deliberate format incompatiblities coupled with pseudo-upgrades that really aren't just create resentment. Remember PKZIP and what happened to them when they tried to claim a royalty over all files compressed with their program? Everyone dropped them, and they faded away.
And then there are whatever delights Daniel Spreadbury and his Merry Men (and women) are cooking up.
We Shall See. Thanks again for all the helpful responses.
