Chant with no time signature

Sibelius beginners can discuss all things Sibelius here ("how do I...?").
hierodeacon
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 7:05 pm

Post by hierodeacon » Wed Aug 11, 2010 7:20 pm

Hello fellow Sibelius users:

I use Sibelius (and I use to use Finale) to set Orthodox Church music that has no time signatures. See an example here:

http://cl.ly/99ebdd9bc75c0d5b6c11

I did this in Finale several years ago by a very time-consuming process:

1. I wrote out the entire the score (but with only one of the four voices) estimating how many measures of how many beats I could fit on each line.

2. I opened a Finale document and set up all the pages of the complete document to have however many lines with however many measures on each line, each measure containing however many beats, according to my manuscript calculation.

3. I entered the notes and ran into trouble a dozen times on every project whenever I had miscounted and tried to put too many or too few notes in a measure.

This process, and so much more about Finale, made me switch to Sibelius. I can see that it is a superior program, however I have yet to find a way to circumvent this process which is by far the most time-consuming aspect of my work as an engraver.

Any of you with experience in music whose rhythmic aspects resemble what I have shown, please advise! To me it seems that this must be such an obvious problem for many styles of music that there must be an easier way than what I described.

Philip


Sebasian
Posts: 1476
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:46 pm

Post by Sebasian » Thu Aug 12, 2010 10:38 am

hierodeacon wrote:there must be an easier way than what I described.
First, look at the plug-in "Draw Free Rhythm Barline" (in Plugins > Composing Tools). I'd recommend that you set up a user-defined shortcut for this plug-in to make your life easier. See Section 6.6 of the Sibelius 6 Reference for some more details.*

Next, you might like to set House Styles > Engraving Rules > Barlines > Default Barline Type to 'Invisible'. This will give you 'invisible' barlines at the end of each line, but you'd need to use ordinary lines to fake a final barline.
(If you want some barlines and not others, then don't take this step. Rather, you will have to select the barlines you don't want and click on Create > Barline > Invisible.)

Then set a long time signature, say 24/4, which can be hidden. The plug-in itself recommends 124/4, but you need to pick something not too much longer than one line of your music. Also, the plug-in recommends using Panorama view, but you would get on better in Page View because you can tell immediately if you have chosen the right places to make the ends of lines, and see just how much you can put in one line before it looks too crowded. (This might make more sense once you start doing it).

Now input the music, and whenever you think there's enough to fill one line, use this plug-in to draw a barline. The plug-in allows you to have Time Signatures, or not. So you would choose No (when you first use it).

In this way you can have 'bars' of any length that is appropriate to the music, but input in a fairly natural way.
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* If you have Sibelius 5 you would have to download this plug-in from the official Sibelius plug-in Download page
http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugin ... tml?id=240

hierodeacon
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 7:05 pm

Post by hierodeacon » Thu Aug 12, 2010 2:14 pm

Hello Sebasian,

Thanks so much for this detailed answer. I will definitely try to implement it, but I do have one further question. If you look at the example PDF I linked, you'll see there are -- rather often -- occasions when I need bar lines in the middle of lines (often ticks, but not always). In the method you've described, is this possible, or do all bar divisions entail a line break?

Thanks again!

Philip

Sebasian
Posts: 1476
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:46 pm

Post by Sebasian » Sat Aug 14, 2010 4:55 am

hierodeacon wrote: there are -- rather often -- occasions when I need bar lines in the middle of lines (often ticks, but not always).
Put barlines wherever you need them.

If you have the default barline 'invisible', you can still see them if View > Hidden Objects is switched on. Select a barline and use Create > Barline > Tick (or whatever) for just that one barline.

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