Sibelius Programme
Leda Billock
Sibelius is a scorewriter program developed and released by Sibelius Software Limited (now part of Avid Technology). Beyond creating, editing and printing music scores, it can also play the music back using sampled or synthesised sounds. It produces printed scores, and can also publish them via the Internet for others to access. Less advanced versions of Sibelius at lower prices have been released, as have various add-ons for the software.
Named after the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, the company was founded in April 1993 by twin brothers Ben and Jonathan Finn to market the eponymous music notation program they had created.[1] It went on to develop and distribute various other music software products, particularly for education. In addition to its head office in Cambridge and subsequently London, Sibelius Software opened offices in the US, Australia and Japan, with distributors and dealers in many other countries worldwide. The company won numerous awards, including the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2005.
In August 2006 the company was acquired by Avid, to become part of its Digidesign division, which also manufactures the digital audio workstation Pro Tools. In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest its consumer businesses, closed the Sibelius London office, and removed the original development team,[2][3][4] despite a 11,590-strong 'Save Sibelius' petition spearheading a campaign led by Derek Williams that included extensive protests on Facebook and elsewhere.[5][6][7][8] Avid subsequently recruited new programmers to continue the development of Sibelius, and Steinberg hired most of the former Sibelius team to create a competing software, Dorico.
The program was released to the public in April 1993 on 3.5-inch floppy disk. It required considerably less than 1 MB of memory (as its files only occupied a few KB per page of music), and the combination of assembly language and the Archimedes' ARM processor meant that it ran very quickly. No matter how long the score, changes were displayed almost instantly. A unique feature of the Sibelius GUI at that time was the ability it gave the user to drag the entire score around with the mouse, offering a bird's eye of the score, as distinct from having to use the QWERTY input keyboard arrow keys, or equivalent, to scroll the page.
The first ever user of Sibelius was the composer and engraver Richard Emsley, who provided advice on music engraving prior to the start of development, and beta tested the software before its release. The first concert performance from a Sibelius score was of an orchestral work by David Robert Coleman, copied by Emsley. The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, also copied by Emsley, and published by Faber Music. Other early adopters included composer John Rutter, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and publisher Music Sales.
As a killer application for the niche Acorn platform, Sibelius rapidly dominated the UK market.[10] It also sold in smaller numbers in a few other countries, restricted by the availability of Acorn computers. 'Lite' versions were subsequently released, and these were successful in UK schools, where Acorns were widely used.[11]
In September 1998, the first version for Windows was released as 'Sibelius', with the version number reset to 1.0.[12] A Mac version 1.2 was released a few months later, and the company thereafter used conventional version numbers for both platforms across subsequent upgrades. Scores created on one platform could be opened on the other, and were backward compatible. To produce these versions, the software was completely rewritten in C++, while retaining most of the original's functionality and user interface with numerous enhancements. The original Acorn names 'Sibelius 6' and 'Sibelius 7' were later re-used to denote versions 6 and 7 of Sibelius for Windows/Mac.
Releasing Sibelius for more widely available computers brought it to a worldwide market, particularly the US, where Sibelius Software had opened an office in late 1996. Following the break-up of Acorn Computers[13][14] shortly after Sibelius' Windows release, no further Acorn versions were developed. Sibelius Software later opened an office in Australia, also serving New Zealand, where Sibelius was widely used.
In August 2006, Sibelius Software Ltd was acquired by Avid Technology, an American manufacturer of software and hardware for audio and video production. Avid continued publishing Sibelius as a stand-alone notation product, as well as integrating it with some of its existing software products.
In July 2012, Avid announced plans to divest itself of its other consumer businesses, closed the Sibelius London office, and laid off the original development team,[3][15] amid an outpouring of user protest, then recruited a new team of programmers to continue Sibelius development in Montreal, Canada and Kyiv, Ukraine.
Sibelius' main function is to help create, edit and print musical scores. It supports virtually all music notations, enabling even the most complex of modern orchestral, choral, jazz, pop, folk, rock and chamber music scores to be engraved to publication quality. Further, it allows scores to be played back or turned into MIDI or audio files, e.g. to create a CD. A built-in sample player and a large range of sampled sounds are included.[24] It supports any MIDI device, and allows Virtual Studio Technology (VST) and Audio Units plug-ins to be used as playback instruments, giving users access to third-party sample libraries.[25] Score playback can also be synchronised to video, or to DAW software via the ReWire standard.
By default, Sibelius plays a brief passage from a Jean Sibelius symphony as it launches, a feature that can be disabled in the application's Preferences if desired. Each version has used a different excerpt; e.g. Sibelius 7 appropriately uses the main theme from Sibelius' 7th Symphony.
In Version 7.0, Avid Technology rebuilt Sibelius as a 64-bit application, replacing the menu navigation system of previous versions with a Ribbon interface in the process. This met with considerable user resistance,[26] however the Ribbon remains integral to the current GUI.
Sibelius users can publish their scores directly from the software via the Internet using desktops, laptops or iPads. Anyone else using software called Sibelius Scorch[54] (free for web browsers, charged for on iPads) can then view these scores, play them back, transpose them, change instruments, or print them from the web browser version. ScoreExchange.com is a website where any Sibelius user can upload scores they have composed, arranged or transcribed with Sibelius, so that anyone can access the music. The site began in 2001 as SibeliusMusic.com, and by June 2011 had amassed nearly 100,000 scores. The iPad version of Scorch also includes a store containing over 250,000 scores from publishers Music Sales, Hal Leonard, and Sibelius Scorch is used in the websites of various music publishers and individual musicians. Publishers can licence the Sibelius Internet Edition for commercial online publishing.
In October 2017, Scorch was replaced by Sibelius Cloud Publishing, providing publishers with an API to automate the publishing and selling of digital sheet Music.[55] It uses the same technology as Scorch to allow Sibelius users to share music online directly from within the program, and addresses compatibility issues.[56]
There are various education-specific features for Sibelius' large market of schools and universities. The Sibelius Educational Suite[57] includes extensive built-in music teaching materials, and the ability to run and manage multiple copies of the software on a network at discounted educational pricing.
Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Keith - 31 May 09:27AM Hide picture I have replaced my computer and want to install my copy of Sibelius 7.0. The instructions I can find do not work as they take me to screens asking for numbers such as System ID and Device number which I do not have. I get a message saying online registration is no longer possible and to contact support, and giving a telephone number which is not manned.
I really have to ask whether AVID had abandonned me, or wants to force me into buying a later version out of sheer frustration - a wellworked sales technique, but still sharp practice.
Can someone from support contact me and explain how to do this (preferbly by telephone so I can do it as we talk, please?
Alternatively cna you tell me which alternative notation software you can recommend?
Keith Popplewell Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Robin Walker - 31 May 09:41AM (edited 31 May 09:42AM) Hide picture If your new computer is running macOS Catalina, then you will never be able to activate Sibelius 7.x on it, as the Sibelius 7 licensing and Catalina are completely incompatible.
Which precise version number of Sibelius 7 are you trying to install?
Which precise version number of Sibelius 7 were you running most recently on your old computer?
The reason I ask is that the activation procedures were quite different between Sibelius 7.0.x and Sibelius 7.1.x.
If you had updated to 7.1.x on the old computer, then you will not be able to activate Sibelius 7.0.x on the new computer.
Rather than installing an out-of-date version from DVD-ROM, you should instead download and install the most recent version 7.1.3 from:
_1_3.html
Please provide full details of any error messages you are receiving, or attach screen-shots of them.
There is currently no telephone support available during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
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Sibelius 2020.3/7.5.1/7.1.3/6.2/5.2.5, PhotoScore Ult 2020.1, Windows 10 64-bit 16GB. Desktop, and Microsoft Surface Book. Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Rob Tuley - 31 May 11:45AM Hide picture > There is currently no telephone support available during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Yeah, I guess Avid employees don't have phones in their own homes. That figures, if phone support has been outsourced to the cheapest third world country they could find :)
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Rob
Sib 4.1, Windows 10. Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Laurence Payne - 31 May 02:13PM Hide picture A lot of it happens in the Philippines I believe. Where Ingrid Guce and others continue to provide online support, and although they're not ANSWERING the phone are still calling out when a support case requires it.
No need to be surly about Ingrid, Rob. She's one of the good guys.
-bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?com=thread&start=715752&groupid=3&&guest=1 Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Robin Walker - 31 May 02:51PM Hide picture > I guess Avid employees don't have phones in their own homes.
There are more difficult issues than just access to a telephone: such as access to the Support Database and case number index.
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Sibelius 2020.3/7.5.1/7.1.3/6.2/5.2.5, PhotoScore Ult 2020.1, Windows 10 64-bit 16GB. Desktop, and Microsoft Surface Book. Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.0: Cannot register Sibelius 7 on new computer. WHAT SUPPORT???
Posted by Julie Fox - 06 Jun 01:49PM Hide picture I have the same problems, and find it too hard to get support for Sibelius 7. Occasionally I've managed to get support when I've had to reload Sib7, but nowadays - and well before Covid 19 its been so hit and miss. I'm looking at Dorico by Steinburg. The people that wrote the original Sibelius programme were made redundant by Avid when they took over,so they went to Steinburg and continued developing music notation software with them (i.e. Dorico) Back to top Allthreads