What’s new in Sibelius August 2024
What’s New in Sibelius August 2024
We’re pleased to announce the immediate release and availability of our August 2024 releases for both Sibelius for mobile and Sibelius Cloud Sharing and Publishing viewers.On the mobile side, composers in the Android app can now enter music using a MIDI keyboard and use the groundbreaking AI harmonization feature to enter chord symbols automatically. We’re also including several playback features on both platforms.
To download the updates for Sibelius for mobile on both platforms, please following these links:
Sibelius on iOS
Sibelius on Android and Chromebooks
Displaying and playing back Sibelius scores on the web now have better playback tools, expanded transposition and more for a better experience.
Read on to find out more about all these features and the usual crop of smaller improvements.
BRINGING ANDROID & CHROMEBOOKS UP TO SPEED
In this release, you’ll find the revolutionary AI harmonization feature is now available when entering chord symbols.As with iOS, the chord autocompletion neural network is now running in Sibelius on your device. It’s using the same ONNX library used on desktop and iOS, so you can expect the same excellent performance and accuracy on Android and Chromebook too.
Now you can enter a chord symbol using Ctrl + K, and Sibelius will analyze the surrounding harmony and suggest the most likely chord. At that point, you can do one of the following:
- Move to the next note or bar by accepting the suggested chord by pressing Space or Tab
Tap the dots above the suggested chord (if available) to cycle through the available suggestions Type in your own preferred chord symbol - Tap anywhere on the score to exit editing the chord symbol
When entering chord symbols for the first time, you will be asked to opt into using the feature. This is in line with our commitment to open, responsible, and transparent use of AI at Avid. Learn more about that here.
STEP-TIME MIDI INPUT COMES TO ANDROID & CHROMEBOOKS
We’ve added support for wired MIDI devices on Android that allow you to write music by playing it.Simply plug in your MIDI device and Sibelius will automatically detect it and make it available for use. Note: on some devices, we’ve found that you need to save your work and restart the Sibelius app before it will allow you to use your MIDI keyboard.
Step-time MIDI input in Sibelius is very simple and allows you to enter notes and chords onto a stave one-by-one using the Keypad to change the note durations as you go. Simply tap on the score to exit note-input mode.
Adding MIDI support to Android and Chromebook completes the line-up of the various ways you can enter music in Sibelius:
Note: This release only includes support for wired MIDI devices. Support for Bluetooth MIDI keyboards will come in the future.
NEW PLAYBACK FEATURES ACROSS iOS, ANDROID, & CHROMEBOOK
In this release, we’re pleased to introduce new playback features in Sibelius for mobile across iOS, Android, and Chromebook. This includes a new playback menu that pops down from the Play button.
Flexi-time recording allows you to record music in real time. First, select where you’d like to start recording in the score, and then tap the red record button. Sibelius will give you a one-bar countdown before starting to record what you play on your MIDI device. The metronome can always be heard when recording.
If you’re already familiar with Sibelius on desktop, you’ll already be aware of the array of Flexi-time options. However, as there are no dialogs in Sibelius for mobile, we’ve chosen the following set of defaults that we find will work best.
The metronome button will enable a woodblock click during playback. As with Sibelius on desktop, this will stress the downbeat as well as irregular beat groups.
The tempo controls will scale the tempo during playback. Tapping the - and + icons will decrease and increase by 5% at a time. You can also slide the % amount left and right with your finger to alter the tempo scaling.
If you’re already familiar with Sibelius on desktop, you’ll already be aware of the array of Flexi-time options. However, as there are no dialogs in Sibelius for mobile, we’ve chosen the following set of defaults that we find will work best.
- Non Rubato, so Sibelius won’t slow down and speed up
- Replace existing music
- Recording into multiple voices is limited to voices 1 and 2
- Adjust Rhythms is set to semiquaver/16th note
- Staccato will be added to short notes, however tenuto won’t be added for slightly longer notes
- Split point is ‘auto’
- Triplets and sextuplets will be added where played, but not smaller tuplets
The metronome button will enable a woodblock click during playback. As with Sibelius on desktop, this will stress the downbeat as well as irregular beat groups.
The tempo controls will scale the tempo during playback. Tapping the - and + icons will decrease and increase by 5% at a time. You can also slide the % amount left and right with your finger to alter the tempo scaling.
NEW ERROR HANDLING WHEN OPENING AND SAVING FILES
We’ve added new error handling when opening and saving files on mobile. When Sibelius encounters a problem doing either of these, a new 5-digit error code will appear. Here’s an example of a typical error you may see:Error 30402
- 30 attempted to open from a URI
- 04 initial action was open file
- 02 empty data
This suggests we tried to open the file but it didn’t contain any actual data. This is common when attempting to open files from OneDrive on Android. A complete list of error codes and what they mean can be found on our dedicated Knowledge base article.
WHAT ELSE?
As with every release, we’ve made fixes and improvements as we introduced these new features on mobile. Here’s the list:
- Sibelius on iOS no longer always saves your newly created score in the “On My iPad/Sibelius” folder
- Sibelius will now show graphics that are included in Sibelius files brought over from desktop
- The built-in convolution reverb can now be heard on both iOS and Android
- Choosing “Select System Passage” from Command Search now works correctly to convert a passage selection to a system selection
And that’s it! We hope you enjoy everything that this update on mobile beholds, and we can’t wait to hear how you get on.
ALL NEW SIBELIUS CLOUD SHARING AND PUBLISHING VIEWERS
Ever since we released Sibelius Cloud Sharing, sharing music you’ve created in Sibelius with others has become incredibly easy. From within Sibelius on desktop, simply click the “Share” button and you’ll get a unique URL copied to your clipboard that’s ready for you to send via a text message or post via social media.Introduced in September 2017, we’ve enjoyed seeing millions of Sibelius files being viewed around the world each year. With demand for seeing sheet music online growing, we’ve transitioned our entire Sibelius Cloud platform to a new and modern suite of services. Part of this work has allowed us to rewrite the ‘Viewer’ component (the thing you see in your browser) from the ground up.
There’s no better way to show you than actually showing this off, so give it a go: play this score back, drag around the pages, change key and so on:
Interacting with the viewer is much like navigating a score in Sibelius. With a mouse or finger, you can drag the score around, and now clicking or tapping anywhere on the music moves the playback line, allowing you to quickly play back scores directly in your browser.
The toolbar has had a complete refresh, and we’ve added several new features too:
The toolbar has had a complete refresh, and we’ve added several new features too:
Transposition, a feature previously limited to the commercial Sibelius Cloud Publishing platform, is now available to scores shared from Sibelius too, and we’ve increased its capabilities from three semitones to a full octave in both directions, including enharmonic and augmented unison, where applicable.
Printing and downloading are enabled in the above score, but are optional. These are off by default, and can be turned on for each score in the Sibelius Cloud Sharing dashboard, found in Sibelius on desktop. Downloading the score will give you a copy of the Sibelius file for you to work on. See below for how this can revolutionize a classroom.
Fullscreen will allow you to fill up your screen with this score. The option will always be there, but only when embedded in iframes when allowed in the html source.
The new page layout button will toggle between laying out the score vertically or horizontally, just like Sibelius’s default, too.
The share button will allow you to share the score with others and provide some useful options to specify the start-time and the key, as well.
Fullscreen will allow you to fill up your screen with this score. The option will always be there, but only when embedded in iframes when allowed in the html source.
The new page layout button will toggle between laying out the score vertically or horizontally, just like Sibelius’s default, too.
The share button will allow you to share the score with others and provide some useful options to specify the start-time and the key, as well.
The about button pops-up information and metadata about the score, including title, number of pages, page size, and so on. There are also a list of handy keyboard shortcuts, too, making interacting with the score really easy.
Sharing from Sibelius has become easier, too, where pushing changes to shared scores will now automatically update without the need for it to be refreshed in the browser.
We hope you enjoy all these improvements across the Sibelius ecosystem, from exciting new capabilities on mobile devices to sharing music online. And we have plenty more to share with you later in the year.
Sharing from Sibelius has become easier, too, where pushing changes to shared scores will now automatically update without the need for it to be refreshed in the browser.
We hope you enjoy all these improvements across the Sibelius ecosystem, from exciting new capabilities on mobile devices to sharing music online. And we have plenty more to share with you later in the year.