Sibelius First 7

In retirement I have returned to music after a 50-year separation. My primary focus is to develop piano and guitar performance skills, but I am also interested in songwriting and composition. A little research led me to Sibelius as a well regarded composition package. I had previously used their standalone playback package named Scorch to become familiar with the layout and playback of scores produced in Sibelius; I was impressed with what I saw. It was a fairly easy decision to go with the company's composition software, now marketed and maintained by Avid.Sibelius First, which I am discussing here, is the introductory level software package. It appears capable of doing anything a beginning student of composition or would-be songwriter needs to be productive. If you move on to grander efforts like operas and symphonies, or even just complex compositions for smaller ensembles, you can easily upgrade to the full version of Sibelius (currently Sibelius 7.1). The software license permits installation on two machines, usually a desktop for sustained productivity and a laptop for composition on the fly.Sibelius scores can be written directly or generated by scanning sheet music or interpreting MIDI files. The software makes it as easy as possible to do away with the mechanics of composition so you get right into the creative process. Still, there is a bit of a learning curve. Hard copy manuals and texts are separately available and may well be worth the cost for those with limited composition training.An Aside: The Scorch program I referenced is now distributed as a browser add-on that I have been unable to make work on current versions of Firefox or IE. If you have the Sibelius software that is no problem. But if you are trying to share your work with others, their inability to use Scorch may make it difficult for them to understand what you are trying to show them.Powerful software package, very good. You'd better have a lot of free disk space. Loading the entire library of instruments will chew up a lot of storage.

This is a great piece of music software if you want to create scores for bands or just for yourself or students etc. It has some great features and really good library of sounds to back it up. For example. I was trying to set up my own score of Elgsr's Nimbus and found a version in D for organ on the net. I was then able to select the ready made ensemble template with violin x2 and cello x2tracks. Then enter the score and then transpose it all to a different key easily. The mixer allowed me to balance the voices / tracks. Drawbacks? A bit fiddly to correct mistakes and get the correct entry. I wanted to merge voices and did succeed - but found I couldn't have two timing patterns within a bar withou using ties everywhere - which looked naff. It's not good if you are used to using a piano roll data entry but I guess you should buy a specific editor like cubase. Final comment - the light version is great value and very useful for music buffs.

I purchased this for my Dad. He composes music on his keyboard and wanted a software that would convert that to sheet music so he could print it out. First problem was the software would not load on his IMac with latest OS. Like others said it kept crashing. Customer service at Sibelius sent him a link to download product. This allowed him to load the program finally. The next problem was the music only loaded the music to the treble clef and not the bass. Again, he called cust. Support and they tried to help. They suggested he get a midi to pull the music from. He did that and still it only loads the treble clef. There is an app that does the same thing for .99cents. Keep that in mind if you only need that. Support was unable to fix this issue and suggested it was a compatibility issue with his keyboard or computer. After emailing cust service several times, I did get quick responses. However, because most of the support was done over the phone, support will not take the product back citing their software doesn't have compatibility issues. If you do your research, which arguably Dad should have done before he had me purchase this for him, you will see that it is a KNOWN ISSUE that this product loads only to the treble clef for a lot of people. There are videos, tutorials and the like from customers because it is so difficult to get this product to work. Even with all those resources, and poor Dad tried a lot of them, it just won't work. So consider us added to the list of many frustrated unhappy people who have purchased this product.

The program is easy to learn and if you know music, you can start writing music immediately with just the basic knowledge of how to use a computer. The quality of the sheet music is Awesome, there're many templates available with which you can start writing your sheet music. I tried Finale 2014 for 30 days and the experience was not what I expected. Finale is a very good program but is kind of hard to understand because for some reason they use their own way of programing that is not the standard of most computer programs. In other words you cannot predict how to do some very simple commands. In my case I went several times for the help provided by Finale to write my first sheet music. Sibelius also has some negative things, like the way bars are distributed, for example; if for you is important to have all bars equally distributed, probably you will have hard time with this program, it's very complicated, because the program automatically adjust the width of the bar as you write music, which is good in certain ways, but regardless you can drag the bar lines, the program has like an "elastic or magnet ability" that doesn't allow you to adjust bars manually in the exact place you want. Neither I haven't find a command in Sibelius that make all bars the same width.

I am an amateur and aspiring jazz guitarist. I bought Sibelius to help me learn to read music because to progress as a guitarist I need to. There is a large world beyond TAB which you can only access if you can "read the dots". Sibelius can do a huge number of things but I'll just focus on the ones I have used. Firstly entering a score is pretty easy from the keyboard and the mouse. You can also scan scores using a plug in program which comes on the CD. Secondly you can "play" the score and listen to the notes as you see them on the screen. Thirdly you can create TAB by copying the "dots" and pasting them on a TAB stave. This is pretty limited however because you cannot choose what position you want to the TAB to be in. Fourthly you can annotate the score with chord frames, Sibelius has a good but limited range of chords but you can create your own. Also printing a score is easy, and via another plug in you can save and view them on an iPad.Sadly it does not come with a printed manual or a PDF on the CD. You can buy books which teach you, some of which are very complicated.

You need to follow the video help and get the hang of how things work. It is very comprehensive. I tried it first (free download) having before that used some free software - crescendo which was easier to get to grips with, but had fewer options. I like the automatic bar length so rests are put in and changed as you add notes - I have little theory of music knowledge. For what I am going to do it is probably much too advanced, but I can appreciate why it is well thought of as a package. I prefer a one off payment for software so I am not a fan of the subscription option on the full version, but it may be fine for others. I suspect I will never use half of the options it gives and whether I have the patience to go through all the video help is debatable. As others have said, some quick start written guide would not go amiss - the quick start guide with it is on how to install it, not on using it! Very impressed with the pdf reading software that comes on the disc. As I had the download for the main prog I just added a few bits from the disc and activation was simple enough.Bin the music at start up - luckily you can turn it off!I am arranging for handbells which are not actually included in the instruments but you can use extra voices to add bells from above and below so it works. All in all it is a very extensive programme, worth the money, but will take some perseverance to get the best out of I suppose. However with a little knowledge and Sibelius First, music writing is much easier and a lot more legible than writing it out by hand.

Having composed music inside my head since I was a baby, but with no way of sharing it with others other than by humming a tune, I never dreamed that one day I would be able to write scores for a whole orchestra. I bought this software recently and I have already created two CDs. Never having done this kind of thing before, I have had to learn how to write music as well as how to use the software, so it's a steep learning curve, but I'm loving every minute of it and I would like to offer my profound thanks to the creators of this product for making this possible.The only drawbacks I have found so far are to do with technical problems of computing. I believe that the music is stored in a midi rather than digital format which makes it difficult for other types of software to recognise it, and although you can copy your finished work onto a CD, it won't play on a CD player, so in the end I had to just play it into a microphone connected to Sony Sound Forge on another machine and create a CD from that. There may be a better way to do this which I will discover as I become more experienced but, if not, it is the one recommendation I would offer to the manufacturers: to increase the export options to include wav or MP3 options if possible or provide clear instructions how to work around this. The quality of sound produced on a computer is also very limited but still very satisfying and the real point is that you get to create a printed score so, who knows, one day I may even get to hear a real orchestra playing my music. Thanks Avid.

Make sure you buy the correct one! This was intended for my 16 yr old about to start A level music. Needed to be compatible with the School software, and it needed to be able to cope with both classical composition and also the far more free ranging and unstructured contemporary style. Although Sibelius First did both tasks, it was clearly not quite what was required so I sent it back and purchased the Sibelius 7.5 Academic instead. Using a student licence this is still 4 times more expensive but is a far more professional and configurable product which will probably last until (beyond?) a music degree. Nothing wrong with Sibelius First, nor Amazon's returns service, but be clear what you need.

Incredible software for the money. This product is amazing if you are an amateur composer (like me) and don't want to spend £400+ on the full version. I have Sibelius 7 First at home, and Sibelius 7 at school (so I have tried both), and I haven't found nearly as many limitations in First than I expected, compared to the full version. The only limitation that might be a problem for some people is the fact that in First you can only use 16 staves in a score, which might be a problem for you if you wanted to create grand orchestral or film scores. However, despite the few limitations I think this is an absolutely amazing product and without a doubt worth it for the price.