Music Technology in Education

As you may know I am a huge fan of Sibelius notation software and have been using it ever since I saw it demonstrated by the incredible Robin Hodson at the MENC Conference in Washington DC back in 2000. I taught all of my music classes in Franklin Lakes, NJ with it and will always be a Sibelius user. One of the many reasons that I love the software so much, aside from the ease of use, is that they always come up with some incredible new features when a new version comes along. I have bought every upgrade and have always been impressed with what the Sibelius team comes up with. When I heard recently about the new features in Sibelius 6 (shipping sometime next week) I was completely blown away. In a nutshell, here they are direct from the Sibelius website:

Magnetic Layout takes care of almost every detail of score layout for you - so effortlessly, you’ll hardly notice. As you write, it gives everything just the right amount of space and avoids collisions – producing beautiful results. This one feature saves you up to half your writing time.

Versions keeps track of revisions to your score, lets you look back at earlier versions of it, and see what changes were made since. Collaboration becomes a joy, and you can even add sticky Comments to leave notes for yourself, or others. Using Versions, students can save a commentary, or Creative Diary, along with their score which details their week-to-week progress. Teacher can instantly access this Creative Diary, spot any plagiarism, and generate a detailed report in Word format.

Live Tempo lets you conduct the playback of your score to produce a nuanced, musical performance. Simply tap a key on your computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or foot pedal, and Sibelius follows your beat.

A new classroom control panel enables teachers to instantly send scores to every classroom computer, freeze computers, and gather in all student’s files at the end of a class.

High-quality playback now needs no set-up at all – just hit the space bar, and Sibelius plays back using amazing sampled sounds. High-quality playback is more seamlessly integrated than ever, thanks to the latest technology from Digidesign’s AIR team.

Add a live performance to an audio recording, or sync a recording with your score playback. You can do all of this and more thanks to ReWire support, which lets you sync Sibelius playback with products like Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, GarageBand and more.

Beautiful Keyboard & Fretboard windows - If you prefer using a keyboard or guitar to notation, these beautiful new windows are ideal. Simply click on the keys or frets to input notes and chords – or ‘play’ your computer’s QWERTY keys just like a piano! They’re great for teaching, too.

The brand new SibeliusMusic.com makes it even easier for you to earn an income from electronic sales of your scores around the world. Or you can just share and exchange scores with fellow musicians and Sibelius users.

People have been asking for years about inputting music from a microphone – and AudioScore lets you do just that! Developed by Neuratron, creators of PhotoScore, AudioScore lets you input music into Sibelius simply by singing or playing an instrument, then hit a button to put the results into Sibelius.

I am really looking forward to getting Sibelius 6 on my computer the minute it comes out. The new features listed above provide more than enough reason to spring for the upgrade. My favorite features for teaching music include the amazing Classroom Control feature that gives you a fantastic computer lab management tool; Versions which allows you to track your students creative process; and magnetic layers that goof-proofs your scores making them look pristine while freeing up more time for you and your students to be creative.

Well done Sibelius. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you.