reference.book Page 180 Monday, August 31, 2009 2:47 PM
2. Notations
2.29 Staves 2.15 Guitar notation and tab, 2.18 Instruments, 2.26 Percussion, 7.1 Working
with parts, 5.8 Focus on Staves, 8.14 Edit Instruments. To move or align staves, 8.10 Staff spacing.
Creating staves To create a staff for a new instrument, choose Create Instruments (shortcut I) – 2.18 Instruments.
Multi-staff instruments Many instruments can have more than one staff: Keyboard instruments – left hand and right hand Wind instruments – when there are several players Percussion – e.g. celesta, complicated marimba writing Singers – sometimes when divided Strings – often when divisi.
To add another staff to an instrument: If you want to add a staff throughout the score, make sure you have nothing selected; if, on the
other hand, you want the new staff to appear only from a certain point in the score, select the bar at which you want it to start. Choose Create Instruments (shortcut I) In the Staves in score list, select the staff next to which you want to add a new staff Click Above or Below Click OK.
You can add further staves in the same way. A single instrument can have any number of staves (even 5, or 47391082), though you will seldom need more than two or three. If the number of staves used for an instrument changes throughout your score, you may need to adjust some playback settings – 4.1 Working with playback. All of an instrument’s staves share its name, which is vertically centered on the staves.
Ossias An ossia is a small bar or so of music above a normal-sized staff to show an alternative way of playing something. Ossias are incredibly easy to create with Sibelius. Simply: Select the passage you want to create an ossia above, e.g. click a bar (you can select just a few
notes, if you like; it doesn’t have to be a whole number of bars) From Create Other Ossia Staff, choose Ossia Above, or Ossia Below. The ossia bar(s) automatically appear, already made small for you. Now you can copy the music from the original (with Alt+click or -click) and amend as necessary to make your ossia. 180