The Sibelius Forum

Have recently managed to input a score from a hodgepodge of notes - lots of copy-paste was used, which I think is at the core of this question.

Though I've got all the notes in the correct positions on the corresponding correctly-labeled staves ( again, thanks again to copy-pasting, often to/from similar phrases from other staves ), there's plenty of evidence that given notes are not always correctly linked to the correct instrument. As just one example, a left-arrow key from 'note 1' on a given staff will direct me to the final note on the wrong staff in the previous system.

What Sibelius abyss have I entered here? What is the above evidence of? How to remediate? I don't even dare to try to play this piece back yet!

Thanks in advance.

How have you input this music?

It sounds very much like what happens if you don't check that staves are correctly labelled in Photoscore before you send it to Sibelius, This is a world of pain. If you saved the .opt file, open it in photoscore and make sure that it has correctly identified the staves and systems in your score. Rename the staves where necessary BEFORE sending to Sibelius.

If you have done this by copy/paste within Sibelius, then I suspect some staves were hidden when you were copying and you have copied stuff onto the wrong staff. Use [ctrl/cmd]a to select all then show empty staves [ctrl/cmd][shift][alt]s. Go into Panorama mode and you should be able to see all of your staves. Make sure you can see the instrument names and re-copy/paste into the correct staves.

If this is complex music, you are in for a world of pain and hurt. it might be worth starting again from scratch.

I think I'm definitely in that world of pain you describe...

Staves were definitely not labeled correctly in all cases in Photoscore before send to Sibelius. These originals were a creative mess at best; inconsistent staves on each page, multiple systems on each page (sometimes), and varying abbreviations of instruments. Plus varying use of condensed vs. exploded voicings. A real nightmare to input. about 20-30 .opt files as worksheets. Oh, and about a hundred pages of score.

Plus, from that point, loads of copy-paste from within Sibelius.

I don't think start from scratch is an option at this point. I'll just have to turn it into a learning opportunity; I guess I'll be learning a lot about deep dark secrets of Sibelius. I'll keep you posted.

Photoscore works really well for the notes, but you have to make sure all the staves are labelled correctly before you send to Sibelius. I do this kind of thing all the time and in pieces where the number of staves is inconsistent you really do have to go through the scan and rename the staves to match. It's fairly straightforward to do - much easier than ploughing your way through the resultant Sibelius chaos!

If you have saved the scan you can open it in PhotoScore and do the corrections there before re-sending it to Sibelius.

If you have saved the scan you can open it in PhotoScore and do the corrections there before re-sending it to Sibelius.

MikeLyons, I do thank you for your input. Unfortunately, at this late stage - given the rehearsal/performance schedule, and given the post-import micro-corrections I've already done, re-inputting the whole score is just not an option. I'll just chalk all this up to my learning more about Sibelius!

It does seem there must be some digital logic within the score file to link a given staff to an instrument - I would imagine irrespective of its labeled name? I mean, is there a way to select an entire passage and say: 'this is definitely a (instrument name here)?'

Not that I know of. Photoscore is, basically a PAGE READER. It reads each page as a separate object and only collects staves into 'parts' if it manages to match them by name.

It finds and labels staves sequentially from the start of the page. If the first system has only 2 staves and the next has 3, then the first system will be staff 1, staff 2 and the second will have staff 1,2 and 3, but staff 1 may well not be the same part. eg if there is a voice part and a piano accompaniment, and the piano has an intro, then the first system will be the piano (Staff 1 and 2), the next system will, likely, be staff 1 (voice), staff 2 (piano RH), staff 3 (piano LH). The only way of picking this up is manually AFAIK. The result of this is the alternating of parts you described.