Admittedly – there are now many different Sibelius products on the shelf in the webshop, and it can be difficult for the untrained eye to spot the right product straight away. Hopefully this little guide can help you progress faster.
Sibelius Ultimate, Sibelius Artist or Sibelius First – which should I choose?
Sibelius Ultimate is the largest, professional version with all editing options and no limitations. With the Ultimate version, you can do anything with sheet music – from simple lead sheets and one-part songs to large choral, big band and symphonic orchestra works and everything in between.
Buy Sibelius Ultimate
Sibelius Artist was originally called Sibelius First, since just “Sibelius”, but has now been given the “Artist” designation. Sibelius Artist is a scaled-down version of Sibelius Ultimate intended for “beginners and intermediates”, yet with an astonishing arsenal of notation tools. With Sibelius Artist, you can write scores for up to 16 systems with a large selection of instruments in the included sound library. – see here a more complete comparison of the different Sibelius editions
If you are a choir singer, amateur musician or music student at a music school or in a high school, then Sibelius Artist is fully sufficient. If the need grows later, you can upgrade to Sibelius Ultimate. If you are a music student at a conservatory or other higher education, you should buy a Sibelius Ultimate Academic edition rather than the small Sibelius.
Buy Sibelius Artist
Sibelius First is the smallest version that can be downloaded for free from the Avid website. Sibelius First is a highly limited edition with a maximum of 4 instruments/voices. If you deactivate the Sibelius Artist or Ultimate license on your computer, you will still have access to the Sibelius First edition.
I want the big Sibelius, but should I own or rent?
You can choose between an annual subscription, which expires after 12 months and is renewed for one year at a time at the same price, or a permanent “perpetual” license, which does not expire, but can be renewed with an update once a year, if you still want to have access to the latest features. If you know that you will use the program for more than the next 3-4 years, then it is cheapest to buy a permanent license and supplement with annual updates.
Buy Sibelius full perpetual license
or
Buy the Sibelius annual subscription
I want Sibelius Academic/Education, but should I own or rent?
If you are a student or employed as a teacher, you can buy an Academic license at a discount.
Read here about how you buy with an Academic discount.
If you know that you are entitled to an Academic license for many years to come, it is cheapest to subscribe. Only after more than 20 years of subscription, it would have been cheaper to buy a permanent Academic license with annual updates. If you buy the subscription, you must be able to document each year, using a payslip, student card or similar, that you are entitled to an Academic licence.
Buy Sibelius Academic full perpetual license
or
Buy Sibelius Academic annual subscription
I need to buy several licenses for a school/educational institution
Schools and institutions can advantageously buy multi-user licenses and upgrades from 5 pcs or more, but they cannot be bought online. The licenses must be pre-registered with the school, so write to us with information about the school’s name, contact person and desired number of licenses.
I also need to be able to scan sheet music – should I buy PhotoScore alongside Sibelius?
PhotoScore is a stand-alone program that can scan scores or read pdf scores and convert the result into a Sibelius arrangement for further processing. A small limited “lite” version of PhotoScore is included with all editions of Sibelius (including Artist). PhotoScore Lite cannot scan scores with more than 12 systems, does not read text and phrasing signs, and has 16th as the shortest recognizable note value. If you’re unsure whether scanning is a useful tool, start by using the included PhotoScore Lite, become familiar with the technology, and later upgrade to PhotoScore Ultimate. Generally, scanning is only useful if the original is clear and stands clearly on the paper. A bad photocopy/pdf or a weak print will cause many errors in the scan, which must be corrected by hand afterwards. PhotoScore has a built-in algorithm for scanning handwritten notes, but in practice it is not useful.
But otherwise, scanning technology has come incredibly far in recent years, and the latest PhotoScore Ultimate 2020 scans lightning fast and with formidable precision, as long as the original is clear on the paper (or the pdf). A scanner is not even strictly necessary, as you can use a scanner/photo app in your smartphone instead and send the image as a pdf to PhotoScore.
If you are first familiar with PhotoScore, you can save many hours of typing work if you e.g. need to transpose, rewrite to a different staff or simply give an existing sheet music a better and easier to read layout.
Buy PhotoScore 8 Ultimate
Will I need other hardware to enter notes?
Perhaps – when you have checked that your current computer meets the system requirements for Sibelius , you will at least need:
– a numeric keyboard, which is the direct shortcut to the Sibelius Keypad window, where i.a. node values are selected. The numeric keypad is not found on many laptops and certainly not on Macbook computers. You can either buy a loose USB numeric keyboard or a complete “extended” keyboard or use one of 2 emergency solutions: a) download the app NumPad with Sibelius for iOS/Android, which has a Sibelius Keypad built in or b) change a preference in Sibelius for “notebook shortcuts”.
– a midi keyboard is indispensable if you have any hope of increasing your typing speed. Whether you record in “steptime” with one hand on the Midi keyboard and the other on the numeric keypad, or you prefer “realtime” recording to the metronome, the Midi keyboard is much faster than using the mouse or computer keyboard. If you already have an older Midi keyboard with a Midi connector, but without a USB connection to the computer, you can make do with a USB-Midi cable .
– an external USB sound card may be necessary if you use a Windows computer and would like to record via a Midi keyboard to a metronome. Especially on portable Windows computers, there can be “latency”, i.e. such a strongly delayed signal from the key being pressed to the sound being heard through the computer that real-time recording is impossible. An external sound card solves the problem. Mac computers do not have the same delay, but an external sound card will still provide better sound quality regardless of the brand of computer.