Sibelius announces new version of Auralia 3,
the world's leading aural training software

Sibelius Software is pleased to announced the arrival of Auralia 3, the new, extensively updated version of the highly acclaimed Auralia aural training and testing software from Australian-based software developers, Rising Software.

The new Auralia 3 user interface has been completely redesigned making it clearer and brighter, creating an interactive aural training program that is easy and fun to use. It now includes hundreds of new, graded exercises whilst instant feedback and automatically marked tests create a stimulating learning environment - teachers are also able to easily track student progress and can import their lists of students from other programs such as Excel spreadsheets. Students can even sing or play answers into the program using a MIDI keyboard or microphone and this latest version includes a virtual guitar fretboard for more input flexibility.

The new version also includes 15 new topics such as Absolute Pitch , Jazz Chord Imitation , Sight Singing , Pitch Dictation and Melodic Comparison. Enhancements have also been made to make existing topics making them more flexible. Many aspects of Auralia can now be customised, for instance, the program can now be configured to support multiple syllabi and levels of difficulty can be tailored to suit varying student abilities.

Jeremy Silver, Sibelius CEO, said: “Auralia has become a favourite amongst primary and secondary teachers and students alike and this latest version looks set to build on this success. We are delighted to be able to work with Rising Software on a product that is so highly regarded by those that use it.”

Designed for students of all ages and abilities and a vailable in single or multi-user licences, Auralia can be used by individual students or integrated into lessons for use by whole class groups.

For more details and to see a video demonstration of the new version of Auralia please click here.

Notes to editors

About Sibelius Software Ltd (Sibelius)

• Sibelius is the world's market leader in music notation software.
• Sibelius was founded in 1993 by Ben and Jonathan Finn to sell music notation software for the Acorn computer. The Sibelius notation software was released for Windows and Mac in 1998/99.
• Since then the Sibelius Group has developed 11 music products for the professional, educational and home user, ranging from Internet publishing to guitar software.
• Sibelius has customers in over 100 countries.
• Sibelius is used in 50% of schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• Sibelius is endorsed by the Royal Academy of Music and is used by all the major music academies and colleges: The Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, Kings College Cambridge, The Julliard School, Berklee School of Music, The Sibelius Academy in Finland, The Royal College of Music in Stockholm
• The world's leading music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Hal Leonard all use Sibelius technology
• Sibelius is headquartered in London, UK, with a US subsidiary, Sibelius USA Inc., in Walnut Creek, California and a new Australian subsidiary, Sibelius Australia Pty Ltd, based in Adelaide, South Australia.

About Rising Software

• Rising Software develops and publishes educational music software for students, teachers and performers. Schools, colleges, churches and other educational institutions use their software daily to help provide quality education for their students.
• Also by Rising Software is Musition – complete software for learning and testing music theory.
• Sibelius Software has been distributing Rising Software products since November 2002.

Sibelius Software: www.sibelius.com • Rising Software: www.risingsoftware.com