The idea
Greg told you to buy Sibelius and take an online course in it, and then to start writing in it, "to just make lines that interact with each other." That last clause is the whole reason this lesson exists. Everything you have written so far lives in Logic as MIDI or in your hands as muscle memory. Neither of those lets you see two lines against each other on a page and judge them.
Notation is a thinking tool before it is a delivery format. When the counterpoint is on paper you can see that the two voices moved in parallel for four bars, which your ear lets slide and your eye does not.
Eight weeks, three to four hours a week. That is a real course, not a weekend. Run it alongside the sight-reading in A18, because they teach the same skill from opposite ends. A18 turns marks into sound. A17 turns sound into marks.
Watch
How to Transcribe and Study a Line on Piano
- The workflow Greg actually uses. Get the line under your hands from the recording, then plug in a piano with MIDI, play it in, and have the software "re-notate the performance so that it looks cleaner."
- He points out that the program hears his swung eighths as sixteenths and lets it go, because the file is for looking at rather than for playback.
- Note what he is doing there. He is not entering notes by hand from an idea in his head. He plays what he already owns, then cleans up.
Tigran Hamasyan Transcription
- [03:27] A Yamaha with digital output through MIDI, running into Sibelius, for the next hour of the video.
- [06:03] He sets the time signature to 12/8 by ear, and later at [08:15] argues with himself about a superimposed bar landing on beat four. That decision is yours to make, not the program's, and this is where beginners let Sibelius win the argument.
- Watch how much of the hour is spent fixing what the software guessed rather than entering notes.
Get Started Fast with Sibelius: Layout, Instrument Changes, Transposition, Playback
- Avid's own 13-minute tutorial, one episode of Philip Rothman's five-part official series (full playlist).
- Watch it in week 4, once note entry is fluent, and not before. Layout tools are unusable while you are still hunting for the keypad.
- Rothman's series originally covered Sibelius 7.5 and he has since noted that it still applies to current versions.
At the piano
Two things belong at the keyboard rather than at the desk.
Connect your MIDI keyboard first, on day one. Step-time entry (holding a chord on the keyboard and pressing a rhythm value on the numeric keypad) is faster than mouse entry by a wide margin, and it keeps notation attached to playing. If your controller has no numeric keypad, note that Sibelius's keypad functions are mapped to the number row and to external keypads; Avid's help center covers external-keypad compatibility.
Play everything you enter. After each engraving assignment below, close the file and play what you wrote from the printed page. If you cannot play it, either the writing is bad or the reading is not there yet, and A18 tells you which.
Exercises
The eight-week sequence, with the assignment ladder from the spine folded into weeks 5 through 8. Do the weeks in order.
1. Weeks 1 and 2: setup, interface, note entry
Do. Install Sibelius First free from https://my.avid.com/get/sibelius-first. Read chapter 1 of the Reference Guide (https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/Sibelius/2023.5/Sibelius_Reference.pdf) and sections 3.1 (introduction to note input) and 3.2 (keypad). Print the macOS keyboard shortcuts PDF and keep it next to the piano. Watch Get Started Fast episodes 1 and 2. Start LinkedIn Learning chapters 1 through 3. Enter one 16-bar single-staff melody three ways: with the mouse, with the computer keyboard, and step-time from your MIDI keyboard.
Done when: you can enter that melody step-time in under five minutes with no mouse, and you can name what every key on the keypad does.
2. Weeks 3 and 4: editing, voices, layout
Do. LinkedIn Learning chapters on voices, chord symbols and editing. Read Behind Bars chapter 1 (General Conventions) as you edit, and fix your week-2 melody to match it. Watch the Get Started Fast layout video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgTBIrEgY7o) and practice magnetic layout, system and page breaks, and staff spacing on a multi-instrument file.
Done when: you can put two independent voices on one staff, add chord symbols above them, and force a system break where you want it without dragging anything by hand.
3. Week 5, assignment one: engrave a Bach two-part invention from the score
Do. Take Invention No. 1 in C, BWV 772, which you already know by ear from A16, and engrave it from a printed urtext edition. Two staves, correct beaming, correct slurring, correct spacing. Do not import a MusicXML file of it. Type it.
Done when: your engraving and the urtext edition are indistinguishable at a glance, and playback matches the recording you studied.
4. Week 6, assignment two: engrave your own goal-note melody, and assignment three: a lead sheet
Do. Take the 16-bar goal-note melody you wrote in A13. Engrave it with chord symbols above the staff. Then extend it into a full lead sheet: melody, chord symbols, repeat structure, first and second endings, a coda. Read the relevant Behind Bars sections on text and chord-symbol placement before you place anything.
Done when: the lead sheet fits on one page, needs no explanation from you to be read by another musician, and prints cleanly.
5. Week 7, assignment four: a full band score with parts. Do: Arrange the same 16 bars for piano, two guitars, bass, and drums. Set up the score with correct instrument names and transpositions (guitar sounds an octave lower than written; check the transposing-score toggle). Use drum notation with a proper drum staff. Extract and print the parts. Done when: the full score prints with all five instruments legible on one system, and each extracted part is correct, readable, and page-turn-friendly on its own. Note: Sibelius First caps you at 4 staves and 1 to 2 voices per staff, so this assignment requires Sibelius Artist or Ultimate. Check https://www.avid.com/sibelius/comparison before you buy. Artist also adds MusicXML and MIDI export. Sibelius First can import both formats and export neither, which is what makes week 8 impossible on the free tier.
6. Week 8: import, export, capstone
Do. Export one of your scores to MusicXML, re-import it, and list every detail that did not survive the round trip. Use the Finale-to-Sibelius migration guide as a model for the workflow (https://www.avid.com/resource-center/how-to-migrate-from-finale-to-sibelius) even though you have no Finale files. Then engrave a one- or two-page piece of your own, apply a consistent house style, and export a clean PDF and a MusicXML file.
Done when: you can hand someone the PDF and the MusicXML and neither one needs an apology.
Checkpoint
- Sibelius installed, MIDI keyboard connected, shortcuts PDF printed.
- Step-time entry fluent: a 16-bar melody entered in under five minutes without the mouse.
- BWV 772 engraved from the score and visually matching the urtext.
- A one-page lead sheet of your own A13 melody, chord symbols and repeat structure correct.
- A five-instrument band score with correctly transposed parts extracted and printed.
- One score exported to PDF and MusicXML, with a written list of what the MusicXML round trip lost.
Read
- Sibelius Reference Guide (2023.5 PDF, https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/Sibelius/2023.5/Sibelius_Reference.pdf). Read chapter 1 and sections 3.1 and 3.2 properly. Treat the rest as a lookup manual. The 2023.11 edition (https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/Sibelius/2023.11/Sibelius_Reference.pdf) has the cleanest MusicXML sections.
- Elaine Gould, Behind Bars (Faber, 2011, 704 pp). The engraving-rules reference, and deliberately not Sibelius-specific. It tells you what correct looks like so you can make Sibelius produce it. Chapter 1 in week 3, the text and lyric sections in week 6.
- LinkedIn Learning, 'Sibelius Ultimate 2019 Essential Training: The Basics' (Jenny Amaya, 8h 16m). This is the online course Greg assigned. It is the current and only Sibelius essential training live on that platform; the older Sibelius 7 editions have been retired.
- Groove3, 'Sibelius Updates Explained' (Doug Zangar, 4h 3m). Optional, and useful once the basics are in, because it covers what changed in recent versions.
- Scoring Notes (https://www.scoringnotes.com/). Philip Rothman's blog, formerly the Sibelius Blog. Read it for workflow rather than for instruction.
- Avid's official Get Started Fast with Sibelius playlist, five episodes by Philip Rothman on Avid's own channel, cross-referenced from Avid's training FAQ (https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/faq/Do-I-need-training-to-use-Sibelius) and indexed at Scoring Notes (https://www.scoringnotes.com/tutorials/15-minutes-could-save-you-15-percent-on-workflow/). Free, and the fastest orientation there is.
- Berklee Online's Sibelius Ultimate course (12 weeks, $1,575) is a credit-bearing alternative. It is not the spine of this lesson and you do not need it.
- Not recommended. Any Udemy Sibelius course. No live, current, Udemy-hosted listing could be confirmed, and the titles that surface are Sibelius 7.5-era. The Ask.Video DVD bundle targets Sibelius 4 and is legacy.