Sibelius helps bring Harry Potter to the screen

The music for the new film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was prepared using Sibelius 4, the world’s best-selling music notation software.

Sibelius 4 is used extensively by film, classical and jazz musicians to write, play and print scores. It is also widely used in education. Film customers include composers, orchestrators, copyists, and studios such as Disney, Paramount and Universal.

In addition to Harry Potter, other films and TV shows for which Sibelius has been used include The Chronicles of Narnia, The Constant Gardener, Nanny McPhee, James Bond, Shrek 2, The Simpsons and Lost.

The time and money saved by using notation software means that Sibelius 4 is an essential part of the music production process. Sibelius 4 allows composers to write music notation on the screen, edit and orchestrate it, and hear how the score will sound using realistic playback. The software also instantly produces individual parts for every player in the orchestra.

In the film world, professional music copyists are engaged to input, edit and print the music to tight deadlines. The music for Harry Potter was prepared on Sibelius 4 by copyist Vic Fraser and the team at Global Music Service, who work on many major film releases. It was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Air Studios, which is Chaired by Beatles producer Sir George Martin – also a Sibelius user. Last-minute changes are often required – for this reason, copyists using Sibelius 4 on laptops are present at recording sessions to make instant revisions and print updated parts.

Vic Fraser at Harry Potter recording session

Vic Fraser comments:

“Sibelius 4 is invaluable for preparing film music. As well as Harry Potter, we’ve used it for many other major films and recording projects, and we find it considerably easier and faster than any other software. Also, more and more film composers and orchestrators are writing straight into Sibelius rather than using pencil and paper.”

Sibelius 4 is the latest version of the software, released in July. New features of particular use for film scoring include the ability to compose to video on the screen – the first ever music notation program to allow this. You can add any video file to a score, which is then displayed on the screen in a video window, and plays in sync with the music. In fact, whether you’re writing music, playing back, fast-forwarding or rewinding, you can always see exactly what’s happening in the video at any point in the score, and vice versa. You can also add ‘hit points’ to mark important visual events in the score, which make it easy to make the music fit the action.

Howard Goodall, film/TV composer (Mr Bean, Red Dwarf and Blackadder), is excited by the new video feature:

“For those of us who spend our days either fitting music to pictures or teaching others how to fit music to pictures, this new feature of Sibelius 4 is a dream come true. I only wish it had been available for the last 20 years.”

Additionally, Sibelius 4’s new Dynamic Parts™ feature is revolutionary for anyone who needs to produce separate instrumental parts, which are required for films as well as for orchestral, band and ensemble music. Whenever you make revisions to a score, the Dynamic Parts feature instantly updates all of the relevant parts, ready to print. This is crucial for making rapid last-minute revisions to the music.

Notes to editors

• 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 20 additional 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 60% 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, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Juilliard School, Berklee School of Music, the Sibelius Academy in Finland, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm
• The world’s leading music publishers including Music Sales, Hal Leonard and Yamaha use Sibelius
• Sibelius was recently awarded a prestigious Queen’s Award for Innovation.
• Sibelius is headquartered in London, UK, with a US subsidiary, Sibelius USA Inc., in California and an Australian subsidiary, Sibelius Australia Pty Ltd, in Adelaide.