Sibelius 4 Review

Overall Rating

Easy to use music score creation program
Playback in Midi
Saveable in Midi format
"Click & Create" notation
Detailed yet simple interface
Part capability
Volume control
Tempo control
Loads Midi files into sheet music

A hassle selecting notes to change or delete them
Loads Midi files with a lot of accidentals and unreadable music

Sibelius is a popular music creating program, and I'm glad to say it has a right to be, as it is brilliant. You can create music and listen to it, then print it out and share it. And it is quite easy to use, as well. You can create music for a long list of instruments, and maybe a few instruments together. You can even make a whole band a piece of music with Sibelius.

Sibelius uses MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) which replicates sound for musical instruments (obviously). You can save files in this format to be played using your system's Midi instruments. General Midi can only support 16 channels currently, which means to save or playback you must have 16 or less parts in your music.

Midi files can usually now be transferred to electronic instruments such as keyboards and can be played on them with their own Midi instruments. In other words, the midi file will be played differently to that on a Windows computer

You can even load other Midi files not created in Sibelius into it. Unfortunately, when you do this, you can always expect the worst. Random notes around the place signals that it isn't too bad. If you have symbols all over the place and numbers with dotted lines pointing to notes then you won't have a clue about what the music's telling you, but it'll still play properly. Sometimes it may come out fine, though.

With Sibelius, all you have to do to create music is select the type of note you want and click where you wish it to be (in time with music), hence the phrase "Click & Create".

You can create multiple parts with different instruments in, and you can control the main volume of each one. You can insert all of the symbols, (E.g.: loud or quiet marks, repeats, and loads more) and the playback will follow them (if set correctly).

Overall, Sibelius is quite a remarkable music creation program, with more uses than one. It's prefect whether you're a professional music composer, or wish to have fun making music.

Members' Comments onMatty2's Review

• jasonbeckett on 1st Oct 2007

  You're spot on. It's great software, and getting better yet with version 5.