Sibelius Advanced Online Course

About this course

Take your Sibelius skills to the next level with this online course for advanced users.  Discover the best ways to layout and format your score whilst harnessing Sibelius’s powerful inbuilt formatting features. Learn about house styles, how to create your own manuscript templates and tips for working with instrumental parts. We’ll tackle drum notation from scratch, playback tricks, setting up your own shortcuts, filtering, and time-saving plugins. .

For more information about the course content, see the full Course Outline below.

Who is this course for?

This course is ideal for you if:

• you are relatively comfortable using Sibelius
• you’d like to know how to do things more quickly and effectively
• you’ve ever struggled with formatting your scores

Pre-requisites

You’re comfortable with the basics and you know a minimum of 2 note-entry methods.

Course length and delivery

• 4 x 75 minute sessions
• This is a live, online course. (read more about how online courses work)
• There will be Q & A opportunities in each session
• “Homework” tasks in between sessions which will help you get the most out of the course (nothing too heavy!)

Course dates

Next course in March, 2013. Course dates follow:

Note: all times are Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC+11). Check your local time by using this time zone converter.

• Tuesday 5 March 2013, 8- 9.15pm
• Tuesday 12 March 2013, 8- 9.15pm
• Tuesday 19 March 2013, 8- 9.15pm
• Tuesday 26 March 2013, 8- 9.15pm

New course dates will be scheduled soon.

What you will need

• A computer with internet access
• Headphones
• Any version of Sibelius

Provided materials

• Step-by-step course notes plus a Sibelius shortcuts list and a Quick Note Input Guide
• Scores and other files required for homework tasks
• Full 6-month access to video recordings of each session. Watch them at your own pace, whenever you like
• Professional development certificate of attendance provided

Cost and Payment Terms

Cost: AUD$200. Payment options as follows:

• EFT (Electronic funds transfer) [Australian residents only]
• Credit card (via the Paypal website. No Paypal account necessary. Will incur a transaction fee of $6)
• Paypal
• Invoice option available for schools and businesses [Australian residents only]

NB: course participants outside Australia must pay via Paypal or credit card (credit card transaction takes place via the Paypal website)

Payment must be received before the first course date. Please also note the course cancellation policy.

If you wish to sign up for the course, but do not yet have approval from your school, please email me.

Places

Limited to 20 places only.

The Sibelius Advanced Online course will cover a range of skills, including the following:

Session 1: Working Efficiently

• Revision of note-entry methods: Step-Time and Alphabetic entry
• Achieving success with Flexi-time (recording live from your MIDI keyboard)
• Using shortcuts to navigate your score quickly and easily
• Making use of multiple copy and paste methods
• Selecting, copying and pasting lyrics only
• Setting up custom shortcuts
• Filtering chord symbols
• Using the Multicopy feature
• Copying articulation to other parts
• Learning to love plug-ins
• Participant Q&A

Session 2: Top Playback Tips

• The importance of text in Sibelius
• Deciding which type of text to use
• All about tempo text and metronome markings
• Creating codas that play back correctly
• Handling repeats
• Controlling playback of specific notes/bars (“play first time only”)
• Setting repeat bar lines to play more than twice
• Playback of performance techniques such as pizz, arco and mutes
• Changing instrument playback sounds
• Participant Q&A

Session 3: Drum & Percussion Notation

• Creating instant drum parts
• Writing drum parts from scratch
• Drum notation conventions
• Working with two voices on one stave
• Drum part note input the slow way
• Drum part note input the quick way
• Discovering which note head to use at which time
• When to write drum patterns in full and when to abbreviate
• Numbering of bars containing a repeated pattern
• Using the repeat bar sign
• Creating and using slash notation
• Indicating fills, play time, solos
• Working with swing style
• Creating orchestral percussion parts
• Participant Q&A

Session 4: Formatting, Layout and Parts

• Step-by-step approach to formatting your score
• Harnessing the power of Sibelius’s in-built formatting and layout tools
• Why you should (almost) never drag staves
• Using justification settings to your advantage
• Dealing with old scores: resetting everything to zero
• Altering staff size
• Avoiding collisions
• Hiding empty staves
• Making the final page a full page
• Creating parts
• Creating cues
• Copy the layout of one part to other parts
• Creating custom parts
• Course wrap-up
• Requests
• Participant Q&A

*Midnight Music reserves the right to alter course content when necessary.



Presenter

All sessions will be presented by Katie Wardrobe. You can read more about Katie here.

Bookings

Registrations are now open for the March 2013 course

Register for this course

What happens once I’ve paid?

Once your course registration and payment have been received, you can sit back and wait for the first scheduled session.

A reminder email will be sent ahead of session 1 which will include login details and a link which allows you to access the online course.

Questions about this course?

Contact Katie.