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jgsidak · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 2:20 am Post subject: Silbelius or Finale for notation?

Does anyone have advice on whether Sibelius or Finale works better for converting MIDI information from the OASYS to musical scores? If so, which version(s) of the respective programs do you recommend?

Dylanski · Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 5

Hi..

I have used Sibelius for a long time and have found it quite difficult when importing midi data. So difficult, in fact, that I often find it easier to manually input notes. Of course, with scoring, the representation of sound is considerably more exact than the nuance usually applied to a performance. For getting midi data ready for import into sibelius, I have setup some macros in cubase that quantize note start, end & lengths into exactly the correct size of a quarter note, eighth note etc. This I think is quite difficult to do on the Oasys sequencer - not sure that there is note end quantize? I have not tried importing on Finale in this way - perhaps they have a better system. I must say I find Sibelius to be a much better application generally than Finale however. I think that it is a much better designed piece of software, although I am probably a bit biased, as I love Sibelius as a scoring application (aside from the midi import hassles!)

Hope this reply is of some assistance,

Cheers,

Dylan Curnow

JamesD · Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 27 Location: MS

I agree....having given up Finale early on for Sibelius. It is very flexible, fast, and doesn't crash, in my experience. Happily I don't care about importing MIDI - it is tedious separating out the instruments.

I also have a Sibelius, Cubase, OASYS combination. Would be vey interested to hear how others are using this combination. My primary compositional tool is (surprise!) Sibelius.

James
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bctines · Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 4:26 am Post subject:

Subjective perhaps, but the Sibelius (I have 3++) manual is way more accurate than Finale (2007) There are actual fairly large innaccuracies in the Finale tutorial. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I had a battle with MakeMusic about that last year and gave up on F for that reason.

And yes F does crash a lot here. Its very buggy. Not worh the money, IMO.

Also I found tech support at Sibelius much more pleasant to work with that at MM.

Dylanski · Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 5

Interesting to note that Sibelius 5 is about to be (or perhaps has just been) released. I haven't yet seen it, but it seems they have put much more effort into the midi control and playback side of things, with full support for vst instruments and fx as well as an "abstraction" layer that sits between the score and the midi output engine and aims to translate the metadata in the score (dynamics, articulation etc.) into midi data to drive the instruments. Not sure whether they have setup a better approach to midi input, but I hope so!

Interested to hear that James uses Sibelius as primary compositional tool. I tend to use it only for producing scores as I have found getting things sounding right has always been a little unsatisfactory. Though I could doubtless have worked harder at setting my midi setup to work better with Sibelius, the support for vst and fx + support for film & timecode are looking quite promising in the new version.

How complex is your setup with Sibelius-Oasys James? Have you setup selection of different sounds for different effects (ie. pizzicato etc.) or tried sending midi CCs to the oasys? I have just setup the default list of programs - which works quite well - but you could certainly go a lot further with the Oasys.

In case anyone is wondering, I am not affiliated with Sibelius professionally in any way. I would certainly consider any offers however!

Dylan.

jgsidak · Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject:

Thanks. Unfortunately, this is sounding a lot more complicated and time-consuming than I had hoped. I was hoping that there was some simple program that could directly take the 16 MIDI tracks recorded on OASYS sequencer and simply produce the sheet music. I have never played a Fairlight, but it is my understanding that the instrument had that capability. It is odd that KORG did not include such functionality in the OASYS. Obviously, the technology has been around a long time, and the target market for the instrument certainly encompasses composers who need to produce written scores.

RC-IA · Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject:

did you save your song on oasys as .SNG file or .MID file?

Francois · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:51 am Post subject:

Both programs are very capable. Some get on better with Finale's interface, others prefer that of Sibelius.

I suggest you tried both demos and see which one you like best.

silverdragonsound · Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 3:21 am Post subject:

I have a tremendous amount of songs saved via midi, actually all of them. Both original and the transcriptions I've done over the years. I've found that simply using the Oasys itself to work with Midi is far less complicated than I thought. Judging from what I've heard from Finale and Sibelius, I'm not sure either is good at importing midi. Since this is also critical to me I wouldn't go with either. Learn to use the Oasys and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Dylanski · Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 5