Notes on Notes

Another great ASMAC Big Band hang Wednesday September 25th 2024, it's John Fedchock! If you know him, you know he's ...

If you read my blog it's pretty clear what my notation software of choice is, Sibelius.  The big reason, it ...

Hey there! If you're navigating the transition from Finale to Dorico after Makemusic's recent changes, you're not alone. Many users ...

Many composers, arrangers, orchestrators and music prep professionals who are long time Finale users are finding that if pays to ...

This post is part 2 in my series of posts translating Sibelius 6 for Finale users. Remember I’m using Finale ...

On August 26th 2024 MakeMusic announced that after they are sunsetting Finale music notation software. They are no longer developing ...

Hi it's me I'm back. 2013 is almost over and you may have noticed I took a hiatus from blogging ...

This has nothing directly to do with music notation but I will file it under organization because I think it’s ...

The great majority of charts I deliver to clients are now attached to an email and sent as PDFs.  No ...

Thanks to Doug Roberts and Dave McKay of Roberts Creative Systems for inviting me to speak at the Nashville Sibelius User ...

It’s taken a while to get my first blog post up this year but here it is! On January 22nd ...

Do you miss the days of grabbing a pencil jotting down notes quickly on paper but you realize we live ...

Here's a question from an email I recently received related to my last series of blog posts. “Hi John, Thanks ...

Hi all!  Yes it has been a while since I've posted. Good news is I do have some new Sibelius posts coming ...

Well here's a first, a blog post with a ProTools tip!  To be honest I don't use ProTools a lot, ...

Surprisingly, I run into many Sibelius users who are under the impression that once you upgrade to Sibelius 7 you ...

This is the first in a series on tutorials on tweaking  Sibelius 7 playback. The ways to tweak playback in Sibelius ...

In my last blog post in this series Sibelius 7 Playback tips: Tweaking Gliss lines we looked at using the Inspector to ...

Hi all just a quick note. I will be doing a free Sibelius 7 workshop at Sweetwater in Ft. Wayne ...

Make Pitches Constant-Drums is one of my favorite plugins related to creating drum set parts. It is a variation on ...

Yeah there’s a plugin for that: Move System Objects For Delete Bar plugin and Add Pickup Bar plugin Continuing with ...

Using the concepts I’ve presented in the “Signal Flow and Music Notatation Software” blog posts, let’s look at an example ...

Many if not most of the projects I arrange for require drum set parts. A drum set part can be ...

Fully notated drum parts are fairly straight forward if you’ve mastered the concept of inputting notes in 2 voices. If ...

Continuing on with fully notated drum parts, here are some plugins I’ve found really helpful in streamlining the process. Duplicate ...

Next on the list of drum set notation 2. Repeat bars Let’s face it, most drum set parts consist of ...

With this post I’ve cover the remaining drum set notation types sited in my first post in this series. 5 ...

Before I continue, a quick comment on the different styles of fully notated drum parts. There are 3 basic styles ...

Yeah, there's an easier way to install plugins With all these recent blog posts on plugins, I thought it might ...

When it comes to rehearsal marks my personal preference is using bar numbers. But many arrangers use rehearsal letters A, ...

Sibelius has many powerful filters in the Edit menu that are useful for all sorts of duties. The reason to ...

In my first post in this series I introduced you to the Focus Family and Focus Set plug-ins, which I find ...

In the last post I showed you how to use plug-ins to quickly voice 4 horns and setup staves for ...

In this series of blog posts I'm going to share some tips on working with large scores in Sibelius. Some ...

Have you ever had a problem, then you find the solution and the next thing the sound you utter resembles ...

Have you ever been working in Sibelius and come across a procedure that seems to take a lot of steps ...

Here’s another example of using the Advanced Filter. This one involves text. Filtering lyrics This is a situation I run ...

In this installment of “Advanced Filtering Tips” I am going to combine several filtering elements and take advantage of an ...

Note: There is another installment of “Finale to Sibelius Translation” coming soon.  In the meantime: Can’t you boys turn that ...

Recently I received an email from a friend asking if there is a way to load an MP3 into Sibelius ...

Avid recently released Sibelius 7 and as usual the folks who develop this award winning software have come up with ...

Here’s a quick tip that you might not use every day but could come in very handy. The situation is ...

One of the the great things about writing a blog like this is, I learn new things all the time.  ...

Something that I say over and over again about Sibelius is, if you think to yourself, “There must be an ...

In my previous blog post in this series I talked a bit about plug-ins.  I’d like to continue by introducing you ...

In my previous blog post in this series I talked about the Line Between Notes plugin.  Shortly after that blog post, ...

Weather it's pulling down a menu in Sibelius 6 or pointing and clicking on the ribbon in Sibelius 7, using ...

In my last blog post, I talked about learning the keyboard shortcuts built into Sibelius and how this can boost your productivity ...

In part 1 of this series we looked at Sibelius's built in keyboard shortcuts, in part 2 we explored organizing, ...

One Really Important Concept If you could learn one concept that will shorten your learning curve and get you out ...

Signal modifiers In my last blog post “Signal Flow & Music Notation part 1” I gave you the examples of ...

Review: basic signal flow chain is: source> chain (with or without modifiers)> output. See my previous posts: "Signal Flow & Music ...

If you are a Sibelius user and spend any time looking around the internet, by now you know that there ...

Optimal Music Recognition Software (OMR) apps, also known as ‘music scanning' apps, can be a powerful tool in an arranger ...

I wanted to wish a happy new year to all my blog readers!  2010 brought some really interesting projects and ...

The time does fly by and we're already 21 days into 2012.  I've been busy with a really great educational ...

A blog about notes on paper to be read by musicians and how to get them there. (The notes, not ...