Guitar master Larry Coryell loves neatness
and speed of Sibelius

Larry Coryell knows a little something about musical innovation: as a multi-decade "guitar god" who pioneered jazz-rock fusion, he's recorded more than 70 albums and left his mark on a generation of artists. So it's no surprise to find him embracing another innovation, Sibelius, to harness his creative output.

"I had seen a Sibelius demo at the NAMM show, and it had such a quick learning curve," he says from his home in Orlando, just back from gigging in Japan with Lenny White and Victor Bailey. "Once I had my own copy of the software, I was inputting notes in five minutes, and the first thing I composed on it was a giant concerto."

That would be "Sentenza Del Cuore" (Sentence of the Heart), written in 1999 to commemorate the anniversary of a 1980 terrorist bombing in Bologna, Italy. But take a step back - why would an artist who's been pumping out charts since the late 1960s turn to a new way of putting notes together?

"Because my writing was so illegible," he laughs. "The best thing about Sibelius is that when I write charts, very often it's not very legible because I write so quickly. But with Sibelius it's right there. It has a lot of things that anticipate your needs, and with the use of the Internet you can send files across town or across the globe and everyone can exchange files a lot easier."

For example, he used the software heavily when he wrote the instructional book Larry Coryell's Power Jazz Guitar: Extending Your Creative Reach, the second such work to his credit. "Before, it was all writing by hand and erasing and correcting, then mailing it and faxing it - shoving page after page in the fax machine and sending it to New Jersey."

The Texas native came to prominence in New York in the 1960s, where blues, rock, country and bop flowed into the emergence of his wide-ranging, technically brilliant guitar style. A 1967 stint with the Gary Burton Quartet shone the national spotlight on the young talent, and for the next decade he was in high demand from colleagues in rock and jazz alike.

He was a founding member of fusion mainstays The 11th House in 1974, and has recorded at a brisk pace ever since, down to last year's well-received Tricycles (Favored Nations Records, 2004), half of whose tracks are his own compositions.

"I use Sibelius for charts, and when I'm doing a big project it's perfect for the orchestral score," he relates. "The sequencer playback makes it possible to self-correct your arrangements. I write a lot of stuff that's very involved; some stuff is basically a lead sheet and that's all you need, but other stuff is quite involved and you need to work out a detailed chart."

"The speed feature is really good," he notes. "And you're able to hear things back on the sequencer. That pushes the creativity forward; you can hear something and get a much better idea right away. They have the tablature worked out very well, especially in the later versions. It's very user friendly, and it just kind of does everything itself once you have the controls down."

"Sibelius is also great for practicing," Coryell says. "You can set stuff up and play it over and over again using the sequencer feature. That's how I learned some of the parts that I wrote for myself on the guitar concerto."

A quick meal, a night's sleep, and after less than 48 hours at home he's off to Spain, where trio dates with drummer Paul Wertico and bassist Mark Egan await, along with a guest appearance alongside the man he calls "the great John Williams." A new recording has a planned August release date, and his autobiography is slated to appear in 2006 from Backbeat Books. A Larry Coryell retrospective concert, complete with guest stars, is in the works for later this year in Los Angeles. For more information on Larry Coryell, including upcoming tour dates, please visit his website at www.larrycoryell.net.

"My life is my music," he says. "The technical side of my producing sheet music is divided into two parts - one is before Sibelius and one is after, and it's much better now."

About Sibelius

Sibelius Software Ltd. is based in London, England. Its U.S. subsidiary, Sibelius USA, Inc., is located at 1407 Oakland Blvd., Suite 103, Walnut Creek, California, 94596 and has offices in Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis and Nashville. Sibelius products are available worldwide in more than 100 countries. For more information, contact Sibelius USA at phone (925) 280-0600; fax (925) 280-0008; on the Web at http://www.sibelius.com; or via e-mail at infoUSA@sibelius.com.