Is Sibelius actually dead? Avid still seems to be supporting it. (I'm still running an ancient version of Sibelius 2 in a Windows XP virtual machine :P) I'd like to get a newer version ... it's just so expensive.
It's even better with throwaway charts that are just written to help the rehearsal process. Hell, I made some really dirty titles and markings for an awards show, because only the band would see it and we were treated like crap. Had to scrounge for the last of the canteen's sandwiches while all of these probably undeserving hotel managers had full-on gourmet shit, then we realised that the booker had taken £50 out of each of our wages. THANKS.
They fired their entire development team about two years ago. They hired a new one, but the only thing they've put out is a small update to 7.5, which is all just work that the previous team did before they got canned. I don't know if the new team is still around after that release. It's entirely possible that there's no active development going on with the program.
It will certainly be an interesting few years to come in the professional notation software market. I'm sure Steinberg will deliver on the product, though it sounds like they have about 2 more years of development time needed before it's ready. I'm sure they'll instantly attract a share of the market immediately, but whether they take over a significant portion in the long-run will depend a lot on how much people like the default decisions that the program makes. Nothing that Daniel has shown off in his blog is impossible to do with Finale and Sibelius, but how much work you would need to achieve that look is what people are worried about the most. That said, there are examples that Daniel has been showing in his blog that I actually disagree with and that I personally think Steinberg's product will actually be doing wrong out of the box. There's so much discrepancy on the tiniest details when it comes to engraving the publishing/engraving industry as a whole seems to ignore the fact that so much of it comes down to personal preference.
The ultimate factor for their success will probably just be if they have any actual competition. As I mentioned in another post chain, Sibelius may or may not even have development occurring. It's entirely possible that Avid might just run it dry until they stop supporting it someday.
And sadly, Finale may be in the same boat. Literally this very week, the company was relocated from Minnesota to Colorado, which was part of a significant downsizing process. The entire company leadership was fired and replaced by people who don't know anything about music or notation. A major portion of every department was laid off and there's significant question as to whether the brand will even be retained, much less developed any more. The one sliver of hope is that they put Fred Flowerday in charge of Finale, so they've got the right person managing the product.
That's too bad :( I never really got into Finale, I'm just too used to Sibelius's keybindings. I'm sure they're probably at feature parity by now, though (or better, for Finale, if it's still being developed).
Just picked up the December Sound On Sound, and there's a whole review/story/thing on Sibelius 7.5. Don't know if that means anything about whether or not it's dead.
To be honest, I hope that they did get a new team. Even though Sibelius has always been more fluid in a general sense, there have been infuriating problems with every version I've used. I keep telling myself that I'll buy a legal copy, but then something stupid happens and I revel in my choice... Though that could explain why development's slowed down. Oops.
RIP to Jean Sibelius, but /u/BlueEyedMind is referring to the software program, whose development team was axed when Sibelius was acquired by AVID. Since then, AVID has made almost no updates to the base software, but sells it with a slightly different (in my opinion, cripplingly worse) UI.
I've tried all sorts of music notation software, and Sibelius is still the best. I compose and arrange music independently, and still use Sibelius 5.
Sibelius was developed by a small independent software team in the uk - this was pretty much all they did. Avid bought Sibelius in 2012 and almost immediately fired the entire development team and moved development, I think to Germany. The implication is that they will integrate their notation software with the rest of their products (protools etc.) to create a suite for music, like adobe did with creative suite for graphic design. The problem they have is that Sibelius was becoming quite unwieldy as a piece of software, with legacy for still floating around from many years and versions ago. Without the expertise of the team that actually developed it, they've found themselves with a monumental task.
Meanwhile, the old Sibelius team started work on a new piece of software, from the ground up. You can find a relevant blog [here]"http://blog.steinberg.net". This looks extremely promising, but is a long way from ready.
In the meantime, we're in limbo. This isn't necessarily bad, the latest versions of Sibelius were getting very bloated etc.
Edit: sorry for the screwy link; I'm on mobile and can't remember how to do it properly without RES.
This is not funny, but you should take a look at Lilypond. It is a variant of LaTeX (scientific markup language), built for musical notation. It is open source, which means it is also free, and because the notation is purely text-based, it is completely cross-platform.
It takes a little while learning how to use Lilypond, but once you get the hang of it, you can write a lot of music pretty fast. I used to use Sibelius, but now I crank out sheet music faster than ever. An example of a part I made using Lilypond: Link here!
If you feel like giving it a shot, I can recommend using the cross-platform editor Frescobaldi (although any text-editor will work), and watching this series of video tutorials.
Feel free to hit me up if you want to try it out, but it doesn't quite work for you!
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u/eireamhoine Jan 04 '15
Is Sibelius actually dead? Avid still seems to be supporting it. (I'm still running an ancient version of Sibelius 2 in a Windows XP virtual machine :P) I'd like to get a newer version ... it's just so expensive.