Recording - August 2012 - 12

Sibelius 7
These days the sound libraries in notation programs seem to approach the level of some of our best sampler and virtual instrument libraries. In this issue we’re taking a look at both the quality of the sounds and the mixing environment offered in the latest version of Avid Sibelius. Coming of age I’m a long-time composer and producer, and like many of my peers I’ve always felt that the real juice needed for serious audio production required either great live players, or DAWs loaded with the best sample and synth libraries, or both. Clearly, the horsepower in notation software has always been routed to the notation engine, and the playback system has been somewhat of an afterthought—good enough to proof your work or do a very rough demo, but not by any means good enough to be useful as finished work. That line may be blurring now, just as another line blurred years ago when I finally had to admit that I could do a score faster with Sibelius than I could with a pencil. It was a paradigm shift for me, and no doubt there are many more ahead for all of us. Audio in notation programs seems to be finally coming of age. How far we’ve come Sitting in judgment on matters of sound is hugely subjective and a matter of perspective. Having been around before the infancy of this technology, I think I can risk saying some things about this. I began writing and producing music before there was any MIDI, and I know very well what solo instruments and ensembles sound like “in the raw,” before any processing, and in situations where what’s written is appropriate for those instruments or not. I have worked with a great many synths and samplers and virtual instruments while continuing to work with live musicians. Based on that experience I can say that the quality of sounds I
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hear playing back from Sibelius 7 is really quite remarkable, as is the depth of the library provided with the application. Some things are still very hard to get right with virtual instruments, things like a very natural, expressive solo from a violinist, or guitarist, or fine wind player. But others have gotten a lot easier, like working with many ensemble sounds, percussive sounds, piano, etc. Sibelius 7 is doing a great job in this area, as are a number of other companies. Would I present a demo of a score rendered on the Sibelius playback system to a film director or corporate client, an orchestra leader, or my thesis committee? Sure—in a heartbeat. You can really tell what you’ve got when the playback is this good. On the other hand, would I deliver this kind of output as finished work to go on a record, or a film? Nah, I don’t think so—not yet. For that I still feel that I’ve got to have my big DAW rig, loaded with the best virtual instruments I can buy, and with live players on top whenever it’s appropriate and my budget allows. The Sibelius 7 Sounds Sibelius 7 Sounds is actually a collection of sound libraries. It includes the Avid Orchestra, which consists of a leading European orchestra recorded by a top Hollywood engineer, playing a very large number of traditional and some more unusual instruments, in a wide variety of playing techniques, including legato, détaché, staccato, trills, double-tonguing for flute, mutes for brass, unmeasured tremolo for strings, etc. There is a wide selection of sounds from the Pro Tools virtual instrument collection, especially helpful for jazz and big-band writing, plus a collection of vintage keyboards. There is a bona fide pipe organ, sampled from the E.M. Skinner organ at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Chicago. A final inclusion that will be great for those writing for bands or drum corps is a large collection of sounds sampled from the famed Blue Devils at Skywalker Sound.

As A Tool For Sample Playback
Part 1: The Sibelius Sounds and Mixer
By Jerome Gilmore

Would I present a demo of a score rendered on the Sibelius playback system to a film director or corporate client, an orchestra leader or my thesis committee? Sure—in a heartbeat.

Converting a score into a Sibelius score We want to know what Sibelius 7 Sounds will do for us today, right out of the box. To make this a useful discussion, I decided I had to come up with a piece of source material for which I had both the score and a live orchestra recording. I found a short score for a piece I wrote in 2002 (to demonstrate a certain audio company’s surround sound offering at that time), and I was able to locate the audio and a print of the score, but no Sibelius files... I had to scratch my head for a while but then I remembered that I had a copy of Neuratron’s Photoscore Ultimate (which is recommended by the folks at Sibelius). I did a quick scan of my score, imported the PDF into the program and within about 15 minutes I was able to export the complete score into Sibelius (a sample page is in Figure 1), which saved hours of time that it would have taken me to play all the parts back into Sibelius to recreate the score. When you import a score like this into Sibelius, you’ll soon come to a dialog box that asks whether you want to let Sibelius pick the instruments or enter them in yourself. I decided to enter them manually, which meant that every staff ended up being set

Recording - August 2012

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