From the course: Sibelius Ultimate 2019 Essential Training: The Basics

The Sibelius Quick Start window - Sibelius Tutorial

From the course: Sibelius Ultimate 2019 Essential Training: The Basics

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The Sibelius Quick Start window

- [Instructor] When you first launch Sibelius, the quick start window will appear. This gives you quick access to a variety of options to get you started using Sibelius. At the top of the quick start window, there are five main tabs. Learn, New Score, Recent, Import, and Latest News. If you click on the Learn tab, on the left-hand side you'll find some video links that will take you to various areas of the Sibelius website, where you'll find a handful of short tutorial videos and some additional information about Sibelius. On the right-hand side of the quick start's Learn tab, there are three documentation links. The first one, Sibelius Tutorials links you to a PDF file that contains directions for several guided projects. The files that correspond with these projects come with Sibelius and are installed on your system when the software is installed. I'd recommend walking through these tutorials after you complete your essential training if you feel you need additional step-by-step guidance. Next, there is a link to an interactive PDF reference guide. Unlike most applications, the Sibelius reference guide is actually quite friendly, so I encourage you to look into it from time to time if you have questions about features of the software that we aren't covering here, or if you just want to dive a bit deeper into it. Below the reference guide is a link to a PDF file that shows what is new in the latest versions or updates of Sibelius, and finally, in the center of the quick start near the bottom, there's a link to Sibelius's online support site and knowledge base where you can go to search for answers about anything Sibelius-related. Continuing through the quick start, the New Score tab proves you with a variety of manuscript paper templates that you can choose from in order to begin creating a score. We'll visit this a little bit later. The Recent tab contains score icons for all of the previous Sibelius scores you've opened on your computer system, categorized by date. This provides you with quick access to the scores you've most recently been working on. To ensure that you're viewing all of your recent scores, you'll want to expand the section bars within the Recent tab's window. Depending on how long you've been using Sibelius on your computer system, you'll see section bars for older scores, for today, for this week, and even this month. If the sections are not expanded, you won't see their contents. Next, the Import tab provides you with four options for bringing music notation data into Sibelius. On the left-hand side, you can launch PhotoScore, a music-scanning program, or AudioScore, an audio transcription application. A lite version of both of these applications is included with Sibelius, although they require separate installations. PhotoScore Lite will read scanned images and PDF files of music. AudioScore Lite will recognize up to two simultaneous notes or pitches within an audio file, as well as monophonic musical lines that you can sing or play into the application. Within both PhotoScore Lite and AudioScore Lite, you can edit any mistakes that occur as the music is converted into computerized notation and then you can send the resulting notation into Sibelius where it becomes a Sibelius file. You can learn more about PhotoScore and AudioScore and browse through upgrade possibilities for both of these applications by visiting the Neuratron website, neuratron.com. On the right-hand side of the Import tab, you can choose to open a MIDI file. This option opens a browser window on your computer that's set to search for files that use the .mid extension. From the Import tab, you can also open music xml files. Music xml files can have a .xml, .mxl, or even a .musicxml file extension. These files offer the best file conversion possibilities when working between different music notation applications. Finally, in the Latest News tab, as long as your computer is online, you'll have realtime access to the most recent news from Avid regarding Sibelius. There are a few options at the bottom of the quick start window that are always in view and available to you as well. Open Other opens a browser window on your computer that's set to search for files that use traditional music-related file extensions, including the .sib Sibelius file extension. If the Show Quick Start when Sibelius starts option is checked, you'll always see the Sibelius quick start window when you launch Sibelius. If you uncheck this option, the next time you start Sibelius, it will open with a blank document instead of the quick start. The Show Quick Start again after closing last score option functions differently on Windows and Mac systems. On either system, if the box is checked, when you close all of your open scores, Sibelius will greet you with the quick start window. If you uncheck this box on Mac, Sibelius will continue to run in the background after you close your last score until you quit the application. If that were the case, to reopen the quick start window on Mac while Sibelius is running, you can visit the Mac's File menu and select Quick Start. Now if you uncheck this box on a Windows computer, then closing your last open score will cause the application to quit. Unfortunately, the option to open the quick start window from a top-level File menu is not available on Windows systems. If you're new to Sibelius, I recommend leaving both of these options checked as to avoid any obvious confusion. The zoom slider at the bottom of the quick start window will increase and decrease the size of the icons in the New Score and Recent tabs. The Quit Sibelius button, which says Exit Sibelius on Windows systems, if pressed on either system will close or quit the application entirely. And the close button functions differently on Mac and Windows systems. On Mac, the close button only closes the quick start window and the Sibelius application will continue running in the background until you quit. On Windows, the close button effectively quits the Sibelius application entirely. And with that, you've gotten a good overview of the Sibelius quick start window. You'll probably use this window a lot for opening scores or starting new projects.

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