Avid has released version 6.1 of Sibelius, the music notation software, which includes an innovative toolset designed to provide aspiring and professional musicians with a more efficient approach to music composition.
Sibelius 6.1 provides compatibility for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and includes other improvements and fixes. It is available free of charge for registered Sibelius 6 users.
Changes in Sibelius 6.1
- Sibelius will now avoid collisions between magnetic slurs and objects under their arc — e.g. notes, articulations and accidentals — by adjusting the shape of the slur and moving its end points to produce the best shape.
- New Play > Repeats dialog, allowing you to specify any sequence of bars for playback, and also to specify that nth-time endings should be played back after a D.C./D.S. jump
- Live Tempo can now include tap points, so that you can specify where you will tap, allowing the use of advanced conducting techniques such as melded and dead beats.
- Sibelius is now compatible with HyperControl™, the new two-way communication standard built in to M-Audio’s Axiom Pro range of keyboards. HyperControl automatically maps the keyboard’s controls to playback, Mixer and note input controls in Sibelius, and the Axiom Pro’s LCD display constantly updates to show the current values.
- Improvements in keyboard navigation between notes in different voices, and in which notes are played when individual notes in chords are selected.
- New Sibelius 6-style chord symbols can now be left-aligned.
- New baseline and superscript chord symbol suffix appearances for word-based suffixes (e.g. add, omit, sus, etc.)
- Further options for the numbering of 2- and 4-bar repeat bars.
- It is now possible to specify the width of leger lines on half note (minim) and whole note (semibreve) rests.
- Improvements to the positioning of the left- and right-hand ends of tuplet brackets.
- The Word Menus page of Preferences now shows the words as they will appear in the actual word menu, rather than plain text versions of them.
- It is now possible to adjust the Y position of rests once more, using a new Rest Y control on the Notes panel of Properties.
- New Merge Bars plug-in.
- Export anti-aliased bitmap graphics via File > Export > Graphics.
- Export embedded TIFF files in grayscale via File > Export > Graphics.
- Pick-up bars at the start of a score can now be exported as a short irregular bar rather than a full-length bar padded with rests when exporting a MIDI file.
- Many improvements to MusicXML import.
- Many improvements to the ManuScript language.
- Sibelius is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
- Sibelius for Windows is now a Large Address Aware application, allowing it to access up to 3GB RAM on 32-bit Windows, and up to 4GB RAM on 64-bit Windows.
- …plus many other small improvements and fixes.
Sibelius 6 for Windows and Mac is available to purchase for $599 USD (educational pricing is $329 USD per copy with additional discounts when purchasing bundled multi-seat licenses). The version 6.1 update is free for current Sibelius 6 users.
More information: Sibelius
