Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Since I have acquired Sibelius 6....................

......... I have used it to rescore and revise all my compositions/arrangements both finished and still incomplete and uploaded some of them to my homepage at Sibelius Music with more to come as time passes by.
There are quite a few little pieces for guitar including what I believe is the first transcription for solo guitar of the lovely little Adagio in F by J Haydn which you can buy for $5.00 US.
There is also a short piano piece in the style of Philip Glass.
I also have ready to upload a wind quintet which is a Homage to a musical acquaintance of mine, still young being in his 40s, who has unfortunately contracted an incurable cancer and is not expected to live for much longer.
Currently I am working on a piece called " Passion Play" scored for string quartet which is sounding interesting.
Apart from Haydn's Adagio, the rest of the guitar compositions are free, so please do take the opportunity to print them off for your own or your student's use if you would like.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Sibelius 6!

Sibelius 6 Educational EditionMost years, I take the opportunity at Christmas to splurge a little, and buy myself a present that I would really like.
Now that we have finally moved to Denmark, I am looking forward to becoming far more actively musically than I have for some years.
Apart from playing and performing, I would like to include a more regular composition regime than I have sporadically done so in the past.
I have been an on and off user of both Finale and it's quite capable little off shoot Musicprose for many years
However, following some fairly extensive online research, as is my want nowadays when contemplating a purchase, I have chosen to switch to the "other" music composition software Sibelius now in it's 6th version.
Why you ask? Well it appears to be more user friendly and intuitive than Finale ( I downloaded the demo version to trial and is particularly so of score layout which can be a pain in Finale! ) and this is confirmed by the many comments made by users and particularly so this latest version!
The main new features are:
  • Magnetic layout
  • Track changes and compare versions
  • Conduct your own scores
  • Better sounds than ever
  • Syncs with many sequencers and DAWs including Logic Pro which I use
  • New keyboard/fretboard windows and much easier chord symbol and guitar chord diagram generation
  • Top notch looking scores with pro engraving
  • Sell scores around the world
and many, many others.
I cannot wait to start using it so looking forward to getting my 24" Imac back today with a new hard drive to replace the original one that was starting to fail? ( So I am pleased I took out some Applecare warranty )
Check out a video of the new version here and Sibelius Senior Production Manager Daniel Spreadbury's terrific blog.