The fastest, smartest, easiest way to write and share music

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For music composition, scoring, performance, publishing, and education, more professionals, students, and educators use Sibelius—the world’s best-selling notation software—than any other solution. Available in three software tiers—Sibelius | First, Sibelius, and Sibelius | Ultimate—Sibelius enables you to quickly create, arrange, share, and publish beautiful professional-quality scores.

And now Sibelius brings professional music notation to iPad, putting the Sibelius workflows used by countless composers, orchestrators, and arrangers around the world at your fingertips, enabling you to create anywhere. And because it’s Sibelius, you can work and collaborate between desktop and iPad systems seamlessly—with nothing to slow you down.

Experience the easiest way to write music

Whether you’re composing for a live performance, film score, or the classroom, nothing empowers you to write music like Sibelius. With the flexibility to bounce compositions between your computer and an iPad, Sibelius offers unique ways of working to drive your creativity, make you sound better, and produce beautifully rendered scores quickly. From its professional sound library to such timesavers as Magnetic Layout and Dynamic Parts, Sibelius empowers effortless music creation.

Streamline your workflow

Sibelius enables you to work anywhere and connect with collaborators, clients, and consumers in more powerful, efficient, and profitable ways. Seamlessly move between Sibelius on your iPad and desktop without any workflow interruption. Compose themes in Sibelius, then move your composition to Pro Tools to build cues to picture. Share scores with musicians on an iPad, in the cloud, or by printing sheet music. And deliver scores to music publishers for worldwide sale.

Share scores with anyone, anywhere

Sibelius | Cloud Sharing opens up a whole new way of working. This groundbreaking technology enables you to share scores from Sibelius to your own personal cloud space (1 GB included), or embed scores in a webpage, and invite anyone to flip through pages and play your compositions using any computer, laptop, or mobile device. It’s ideal for previewing and reviewing musical works in the studio, in the classroom, or on a sound stage.
Sibelius key features and benefits

Write music quickly and easily

Sibelius makes music composition easy, giving you the flexibility to work anywhere using a computer or iPad. Whether you prefer to enter notes from the onscreen notation Keypad, a MIDI keyboard, your computer keyboard, or using an Apple Pencil, Sibelius takes care of all note layout, orientation, and rest details for you.

Build up your composition

With support for up to 16 instrument parts (staves), you can create rich, multilayered compositions. But it’s not just about notes. Add chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams by simply playing a chord on a MIDI device or typing suffix elements. Turn guitar tab into notation and back again. And easily add lyrics, titles, text, and graphics to round out your score.

Spark ideas with loop playback

When composing, sometimes the best way to come up with parts is to improvise different melody lines, riffs, and chords over a section of music. Sibelius now enables you to select any part of your score for loop playback, so you can quickly experiment. You can even slow down the tempo during loop playback for easier rehearsal and lesson practice—ideal for students and teachers.

Create beautiful scores fast

Sibelius lets you spend more time writing music instead of fixing it. Magnetic Layout automatically gives everything just the right amount of space and avoids collisions, cutting writing time in half. Dynamic Parts can automatically create and update separate instrumental parts whenever you change your score. You can also fine-tune the score for your engraving needs. Plus, the new set of house styles lets you customize a look that perfectly suits your score.

Turn MIDI into Sibelius scores fast

Easily create sheet music from a Pro Tools or other DAW session into fully notated scores. With expanded MIDI import features, you can omit, map, arrange, and/or merge MIDI tracks into a score on import. You can also add articulations and techniques during import to preserve the composer’s intent, helping jumpstart the instrument assignment and notation refinement process.

Turn music into scores

Sibelius for desktop comes with two companion applications that enable you to turn recorded, performed, printed, and handwritten music into notation. With AudioScore Lite, you can input notes by singing or playing a monophonic instrument through a microphone—or even turn recorded CD tracks into notation. With PhotoScore & NotateMe Lite, you can turn printed, PDF, and JPEG sheet music into editable scores—and even handwrite music.

Hear your music in stunning detail

With the included 10 GB sound library of high-quality sampled instruments (920 MB on mobile), you can play back compositions to hear how it would sound with full instrumentation. The Espressivo feature adds a more humanistic feel, so you can hear every nuance of your score expressed on playback the way you intended it to be heard. You can also use VST and AU virtual instruments and effects.

Get inspired

Got writer’s block? No need to fret. Check out the Score Starter and Ideas library to kick-start your creativity. Get started fast with 40 genre-specific Score Starter templates. And gain further inspiration with the Ideas Hub, featuring 300 library ideas at your disposal to rev up your creative flow. You can even capture your own ideas for future use.

Collaborate with anyone

Take the stress out of collaborating with non-Sibelius composers. With a single click, Sibelius transforms MusicXML files into beautifully formatted scores without any manual work. You can import score data directly into your go-to template or into a new Sibelius file. All notation, markup, and layout details are automatically and intelligently assigned, so you can start immediately and spend more time on the music—not toiling away conforming elements to a template.

Share your work

Sibelius makes it easy to share, review, and work on scores with other composers. Share up to 20 scores online using Sibelius | Cloud Sharing and invite others to view and hear your music. Use Review mode to keep your work locked down. Add comments directly on a score to communicate edits and ideas. Share more scores with an Avid Premium Cloud Plan. You can also collaborate through MusicXML, print scores, and export your music as MIDI or PDF files.

Connect with the community

Looking to collaborate, find scoring opportunities, or get feedback on your work? With the free Avid Link app, you can connect with other composers, artists, and media professionals online, promote your scores and skills, and expand your creative possibilities further. You can even sync your Sibelius | Cloud Sharing scores with your Avid Link and Artist Community portfolio.

Go further with Sibelius | Ultimate

Need more advanced notation and layout capabilities? Sibelius | Ultimate is ideal for professional composers, arrangers, copyists, engravers, and educators, offering more notation tools, instrument sounds, unlimited staves, typography tools, and the ability to customize just about every element of your score. Here are some key advantages that Sibelius | Ultimate offers over Sibelius:

• An exclusive, professional-quality 36 GB sound library
• Advanced text and typography features
• Extended graphics export, including EPS and SVG files
• Fully flexible Magnetic Layout collision avoidance
• Live Tempo for “conducting” tempo playback
• Version tracking and comparison
• Unlimited staves
• Timeline window for quickly navigating your score
• Ability to extract instrumental parts as separate files, plus many other features for orchestral/band music
• Features for creating worksheets and exercises
• “Arrange” feature to help with arranging and orchestration
• Over 140 plug-ins that do useful things, with many more available for download from the web
• 1,700 worksheets for teaching music in the classroom (Sibelius | Ultimate for Education only)
• Ability to export your score as an MP3 file
• Many more notations, including special symbols and formats for unusual instruments
• Fully editable instruments, lines, symbols, and other notations
• Publishing features to make your scores look completely professional

EDUCATION