Avid today introduced Sibelius for Mobile, a professional music notation app for iPad that’s designed to lets you move compositions seamlessly between iPad and Mac or Windows desktop, letting you work anywhere you like, taking full advantage of the Apple Pencil and iPad multi-touch experience.
iPad users can use Sibelius for Mobile to create, edit, share, and play Sibelius files. It’s designed to complement the desktop version, though, so some notation and layout features are only available in the desktop version.
Sibelius for mobile reimagines the pen and paper experience for tablet, with new note input workflows, taking full advantage of Apple Pencil and iPad touch capabilities. You can enter notes with the onscreen Keypad or a keyboard, and Sibelius takes care of all note layout. Touch a note and drag up or down to change its value, or drag left or right to add a flat or sharp. With an Apple Pencil, you can tap a note and tilt up or down to add a flat or sharp, or tilt left or right to choose the note value.
With files saved to iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive or other iOS-supported cloud service, users have access anywhere to all their ideas and scores. This means that users can have their entire music portfolio with them wherever they go, along with a powerful notation toolset.
“Sibelius on an iPad is transformational. For me, it is the single biggest advance in notation software in a decade,” says composer Simon Franglen. “I can write sketches, amend and review full orchestral scores, tweak choral charts anywhere I am. It is the beginning of a revolution.”
Getting Started With Sibelius for Mobile:
Pricing and Availability:
Sibelius for Mobile is available now as a free download.
The free version lets you create scores with up to four parts. Avid offers two paid tiers: Sibelius, which lets you create scores with up to 16 parts; and Sibelius Ultimate, which lets you create scores with an unlimited number of parts. See the Avid site for details.
Seems so old fashioned that people still use notation
Seems limiting to ignore traditional instruments and players, doesn’t it?
Are you hoping to show them a piano roll view or something?
Of course it make sense for traditional composition uses, scoring, and the like. But for anything where timbre is a compositional element or the tuning is non-standard, it just falls flat.
You can use colors to identify how sharp or flat you are looking for if you want to go crazy about it.
Look up poly chromatic score.
For timbre you can write out what you want player to do inside a box if it’s something weird. Like tap on violin with fingernail, etc.
if you are tripping on 5 notes and the rest ist timbre manipulations notation makes no sense at all 😉
tell it to the 20th century
There are thousands of scores in the past 100 years that have figured out various ways to notate timbre and non-standard tuning.
They’re either a troll or a DJ (which would be even worse), ignore them. It’s funny how Avid released this a few days after Steinberg unveiled Dorico.
I’m imagining Avid had a little panick when they saw the Dorico rollout and had to move quickly to try to catch people before they “committed” to Dorico.
It’s interesting how both are unapologetically subscription-based.
Dorico mobile is free for up to 4 players, and $4/month after that, compared to the same free tier for Sibelius mobile, or $156/year for full thing. Dorico desktop is a one-time purchase, Sibelius is subscription. I’m moving to Dorico.
For the mobile version alone: Free for 4 parts, or $84 a year for up to 16 parts, or $156 for unlimited parts. I’m not that into you, Avid.
At least with the subscription, I could decide after one month that I’m ready to tap out.
Notation on an iPad seems tedious. Maybe I’m wrong.
I am glad your headline is not as deceptive or misleading as Avid’s … “Sibelius for Mobile” suggests untruthfully … that it might not just be limited to iOS devices
I have tried importing musicxml and midi files into Sibelius for mobile but it didn’t work. I don’t have Sibelius on my desktop. That such direct import is not possible means I have limited use for Sibelius. So Dorico wins. I need to able to export from Notion, StaffPad and a number of other apps to Sibelius.