How to make playhead reset? Mouse entry? Soundfonts?

[TWHansen]

I am brand new at Sibelius and attempting to migrate from my beloved Midisoft Studio 4 since apparently there's no way to get SoundFonts to work with it in Windows 7. I'm evaluating Finale as well but the shortcuts are so invasive in Finale that you can't even type a question in the Help bar. I figure I might as well switch music production over to the OSX side of my MacBook since everything else I do is there.

There are a couple of aggravating workflow things that are stopping me from even getting started here...

Firstly, how can I set playback so that the playhead automatically goes back to the beginning of the track or to the beginning of the measure I'm working on? My writing style depends heavily on trial-and-error. I want to throw some notes on the staff, hit "space" to play, "space" again to stop, make some tweaks, and then hit "space" to play it again. Presently, "space" to stop and start resumes from where it stops.

Second, is there a way to have it default to mouse entry of notes without having to tap N every time?

I will have loads of dumb questions after these, for sure.

I have no interest in publishing sheet music or drowning in formalized formatting. I'm not even crazy about having to work in a "page" layout; Studio 4 had a Scroll View that had each individual track lined up with unlimited length and unlimited number of tracks.

The music I've written is fairly SoundFont intensive; I had my XP machine set up with 20 banks of SoundFonts, some of which have up to 128 instruments and none of which conform to General Midi instrument naming conventions, and I could use any instrument from any bank at any time in the same MIDI notation project. I want to find a way to replicate this on the Mac.

-Tim Hansen

[NeutronGirl]

Hey Tim,

A few things.

Sibelius has its own panorama "unlimited length" mode, you simply click on the little button up in the top toolbar that is directly to the right of the zoom percentage. It looks like a little panorama photo.

The tab key will take you to the first available spot to enter a note. Other than that N is the easiest way to get into mouse note entry mode, although many users who want to enter notes more quickly will use other methods than mouse entry ie. midi keyboard, one hand on the qwerty keyboard, one hand on a keypad for melody and rhythm respectively.

The shortcut Y moves the cursor to the note/rest that is highlighted. It's a good shortcut and so is Command [ which takes the cursor back to the beginning.

I'm not sure about getting the playback line to return to where it started, I'll be interested to hear if anyone else knows whether this is possible.

Hope some of this helps!

Amy

[Sebasian]

how can I set playback so that the playhead automatically goes back to the beginning of the track or to the beginning of the measure I'm working on?

If you don't want to use the little transport window, then:
To start from a particular place: click on (for instance) the first note of the measure and press P (or Y followed by SPACE)
To start from the same place as last playback, use Ctrl+SPACE
To start from the beginning: Ctrl+Left Square Bracket then SPACE

I had my XP machine set up with 20 banks of SoundFonts,

There are soundfont players available, though I haven't tried them with Windows 7. SFZ was a free soundfont player which Sibelius could use as a VSTi and it works well for me. It's now a paid-for product, but the earlier free version is still around on the web if you search.

[NeutronGirl]

Hi Sebasian and Tim,

Just to clarify it's Option (Alt) SPACE on a Mac cause Command SPACE, the equivalent of Control, conflicts with the Spotlight.

Just looked it all up in the Menu and Shortcuts area of the Preferences.

FYI Tim you can set any Shortcut to anything you want in the Preference > Menu and Shortcuts. Very helpful.

Thanks Sebasian!

Amy