Sibelius = Ulcers

I am totally determined to write some music. I have never been able to make much sense of Sibelius, but then I didn’t really try all that hard. I have moved it back to this computer, and I’m going to give it another shot. I’ll have to get the manual out. It’s like 9000 pages long.

I was probably stupid to buy Sibelius. The reviews said “Intuitive!”, and I believed them. There is nothing intuitive about it. Computer users don’t start with notation software. They start with word processors. Therefore the people who write notation software should fix their programs so they work like Word. Things like cut and paste should be available, and you should be able to put a cursor wherever you want and enter a note or a rest. Sibelius isn’t like that. It won’t let you copy notes at random and paste them where you want them; you can only put them where Sibelius thinks they fit. You can’t put more notes in a measure than it will hold, with the intention of removing the extra notes later. You can’t easily copy a measure and paste the copy where you want. You have to learn a bunch of weird rules that are hard to remember because they go against common sense.

I’m sure that if I used Sibelius every day for eight hours, at the end of a week, I’d be able to use it, but the pain of the first two or three days is pretty bad.

I used to have a cheap program called Rhapsody, and it was easy to use. As I recall, you could pretty much put notes where you wanted them. There must be something else like that out there. I used Rhapsody to create this soon-to-be-Grammy-nominated piece of music:

loobner4

I realize this is the most annoying non-Kenny-G. song ever written, but I had a reason for writing variations on it.

If I could write music that simple and add lyrics, I’d be thrilled. Maybe Sibelius is too big. I think you can use it to create orchestral scores.

I’m going to root around on the web and make sure there’s no better software out there, and then I’m going to get to work. I can’t take this any more. I have to make this work before my head explodes.