'how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?'

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how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius? - starmusic, 17 Feb 08:36AM
     Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - James, 17 Feb 03:15PM
         Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 26 Feb 05:44PM
             Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - James, 26 Feb 06:24PM
                 Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 03 Mar 02:12AM
                     Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - Wim Hoogewerf, 03 Mar 02:14PM
                         Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 03 Mar 07:49PM
                             Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - Wim Hoogewerf, 03 Mar 11:09PM
                                 Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 04 Mar 02:56AM

how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by starmusic - 17 Feb 08:36AM
I'm very surprised that the Guitar support for Sibelius doesn't include a half-bar (half-barre) symbol.

Everyone seems to be getting by with a simple font for
full bars like "C VII" at the seventh fret, but
a half-bar (usually a C with a vertical slash through
it, or a tiny fraction in front of the C) is very common.

Am I missing something? The Cut Time symbol is close, but way too heavy to use.

Thanks!
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by James - 17 Feb 03:15PM (edited 17 Feb 03:23PM)
There are a number of ways to indicate full and partial barres and it's not really standardized. Some people use the letter C, for Spanish "Cejilla." Some use B for "Barre" or "Bar," which people spell both ways. Personally, I just use a roman numeral. If it's a partial barre, I put a ½ character in front of it.

To do it your way, look for the cent character, ¢, and then apply the font, font size, bold or not, to it that you like. For the cent character on the mac, launch TextEdit or Safari. From the Edit menu, choose Emojis and Symbols. Type cent into the search field. Double click a cent character and it should appear in the field where the cursor was. Copy and paste it into Sibelius text. On a PC, type alt 0162. Or just copy and paste from the cent character I wrote above.

Sibelius text can have a mixture of fonts so your cent sign can be in one font and font size and your roman numeral can be in another.

--
Mac OS 10.12 Sierra
Sibelius 6.2
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by starmusic - 26 Feb 05:44PM
Thanks! That's a great idea.

For the fraction option, is there a font that has that as
a single character?
Also, I'm not finding a window that lets me review ALL the characters of a font--just the letters and digits.
Is there a utility somewhere that shows all 256 characters?

Thanks again, and sorry for the delayed response -- somehow this didn't get sent before.
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by James - 26 Feb 06:24PM
Yes, there is a single character ½. In some fonts, the 1 and 2 are positioned vertically directly above one another but in most fonts they are diagonally positioned. Personally I use the font Batang 15 Bold for a ½ character that has the numerals positioned vertically.

Yes, there are applications to see the thousands of characters in unicode fonts (which may include Chinese characters, etc.):

Character Map, applet included with Microsoft Windows
Font Book, application included with macOS

--
Mac OS 10.12 Sierra
Sibelius 6.2
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by starmusic - 03 Mar 02:12AM
James:
Thanks again for the terrific help. I spent too much time looking through the Symbol windows and expecting to create a Compound symbol or such... especially since the Sibelius UI doesn't give access to the higher characters (that I could find).

Your approach is simple and elegant and will likely be useful for a range of unusual issues.

--Brian
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by Wim Hoogewerf - 03 Mar 02:14PM
Hi Brian, sorry for chiming in late. Just a suggestion: the 1/2 barre can be notated as ¢, as 1/2 C, 1/2 B etc. but also you see MC which is an abbreviation of something like medio ceja.
I did some research within my private library (an entire wall of music scores) to see if there's any barre standard, but I couldn't find two scores which had exactly the same notation, even published by the same company!

--
MacOS 10.9.5 Sibelius 8.7.2
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by starmusic - 03 Mar 07:49PM
Yes, it's amazing how nothing really stuck as a standard. And for Parkening and James Marshall, they got very specific for partial barres like 2/3 or I think I remember a 5/6ths.
And many players now like Arabic numerals instead of Roman for "C3" at the third fret.

Here's a *related* question: I've gotten into using the left
bracket ( [ ) symbol that's available, which I notate with a single "1" to indicate the range of notes in a chord or arpeggio that would all be with that finger. This is often nice and clean without the need for the C or roman numerals above.
There's one that's way too heavy (thick ink), but the ones under Figured Bass work well -- but I have to pick a fixed size (I think they were characterized as 2 or 3 characters tall).

Is there any way to create this as a dynamically sized symbol,
like the squiggly vertical line for a harmonic arpeggio, which has "handles" for resizing to exactly what's desired?

Regards,
Brian
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by Wim Hoogewerf - 03 Mar 11:09PM
Here's one of my Sibelius guitar files. Feel free to use whatever suits you. I made special barré brackets.

--
MacOS 10.9.5 Sibelius 8.7.2
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Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius?
Posted by starmusic - 04 Mar 02:56AM
Wim:
Thanks for sharing... but I don't see any kind of link or button for a file.

Perhaps there's something about this forum I'm not familiar with?
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Messages in this thread

how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibelius? - starmusic, 17 Feb 08:36AM
     Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - James, 17 Feb 03:15PM
         Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 26 Feb 05:44PM
             Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - James, 26 Feb 06:24PM
                 Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 03 Mar 02:12AM
                     Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - Wim Hoogewerf, 03 Mar 02:14PM
                         Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 03 Mar 07:49PM
                             Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - Wim Hoogewerf, 03 Mar 11:09PM
                                 Re: how to do a guitar Half-Bar symbol in Sibel... - starmusic, 04 Mar 02:56AM