A Note from the Gracenotes Editor

Hello, and welcome to the 1st monthly edition of Gracenotes - the Sibelius USA newsletter to Sibelius enthusiasts in the North and South Americas. Gracenotes is meant to help you keep informed about upcoming events, training, updates and other news items concerning Sibelius, our products and the people using them.

By way of personal introduction, my name is Mark Ruch and in addition to my responsibilities as the recently hired Director of Marketing for Sibelius, I am also the Editor for Gracenotes. I hope to make this a useful and enjoyable exchange of information and ideas. To that end, I strongly encourage you let your voice be heard by participating in our surveys and expressing your opinions about the issues that matter most to you. Let me know what you think; I can be emailed at gracenotes@sibelius.com

By the way, one of the compelling reasons for the newsletter format is that we found ourselves sending many of you single topic emails two to four times a month (too much email) - and others of you less than once a year (too little email). We're hoping to achieve that perfect "Goldilocks" balance, and hope a multi-topic email is just right for you. We may still send the occasional product or regionally focused email when necessary.

Sibelius User Wins the Pulitzer Prize in Music

Composer Paul Moravec has captured the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music for "Tempest Fantasy," a composition for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Moravec used Sibelius as his notation software to write this musical meditation on his favorite Shakespearean play, which was commissioned and premiered by Trio Solisti and clarinetist David Krakauer in May 2003 at the Morgan Library in New York City.

Sibelius congratulates Mr. Moravec as he joins the esteemed company of five other Pulitzer Prize winners who also use Sibelius. Can you name them?

To read further, please  click here

New updates for Sibelius 3

If you haven't heard yet, the Sibelius 3.1.3 update is now available and ready for download. We recommend that all users who have Kontakt Player Gold, and all users of Sibelius on Mac OS X, update to Sibelius 3.1.3. If you already have Sibelius 3, please click here to learn more and download the latest update.

For those of you who are using Sibelius 1 or 2 who would like to upgrade to Sibelius 3, please click here to learn how.

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Take our Survey about Online Training
Win Sibelius Software!

We have had quite a few requests for training sessions for Sibelius 3 and other Sibelius products, and to meet the demand we're considering Web-based trainings using the latest in "Webinar" technology. These would likely include live, interactive software demos with simultaneous phone and computer conferencing, print or PDF training manuals, and follow-up Q&A emails with instructors.

Our intent would be to provide all of the content and most of the qualities of our "live in person" trainings, while greatly increasing our ability to make these trainings available to our users. This would, in effect, allow us to provide monthly or even weekly sessions in the convenience of your home or workplace, rather than annual sessions at some distant location). If this interests you, please take a moment to fill out a short online survey; it should only take a few minutes of your time.

In exchange for filling out the survey, we'll enter you in a drawing to win your choice of either Kontakt Player Gold ($149 value) or PhotoScore Professional ($199 value).

Due to legal issues beyond our control, the prize drawing is limited to US residents only (void in Puerto Rico and where prohibited by law). Apologies to those of you who live outside the US. We'd still love to get your input on the survey!  Click here to view the official rules.

 Take the Survey Now - Click Here

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Upcoming Shows and Events

If we're in your neck of the woods, please drop by and see us. Here are the events we'll be attending in July and August:

Start	End	Event & Website	Location	Host	Booth
7/23	7/26	Texas Bandmasters Assn www.txband.com	San Antonio, TX	Brook Mays	12
7/26	7/29	Texas Choral Directors Assn www.tcda.net or www.ensemble.org/tcda/	San Antonio, TX	Brook Mays	13
8/12	8/14	National Flute Convention www.nfaonline.org	Nashville, TN	Sibelius	301
8/22	8/23	MIAC Music Industries Association of Canada www.miac.net	Toronto, ON	Thinkware	801

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Hints & Tips for Sibelius Users

Each month, Robin Hodson (Eastern Region Manager for Sibelius, based in Baltimore) presents some quick hints on getting your engraving and notating work done with the minimum of fuss. You'll see we're really into shortcuts (i.e. keys you press on the computer keyboard that bypass the need for a mouse and menus).

This month: The Basics!

Getting started with a score in Sibelius 3, including how to enter notes, quick hints for copying/pasting/repeating and, as promised, a long list of Sibelius 3 shortcuts.

Download the printable PDF versions of Robin's useful guides, click here

About Robin Hodson

Robin is Sibelius' longest serving member of staff and has been training folks on both sides of the Atlantic since 1996 - and we're talking pre-windows and Mac days, when Sibelius ran on British Acorn computers!

As is the case with the vast majority of Sibelius employees, Robin is an accomplished musician. You can check out and download his free choral music (using our free Scorch web browser plug-in) by visiting http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/robinhodson

Get Free Trial Software for Sibelius 3

If you don't have Sibelius 3, we'd strongly encourage you to Download a Free Trial Version by clicking here.  Once you DO have it, be sure to download Robin's Hints and Tips every month. They'll get you up and running and ensure you spend more time working on your music and less time working on your computer skills.

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A Personal Thank You to Our Users

 

Dear Sibelius User,

Over the past few months we've sent two separate user surveys. The first originated from our London office and pertained to how and for what purposes you use the Sibelius notation program, the results of which will aid us in enhancing the product for future product development. The second survey originated from our US office in Walnut Creek, CA and was designed to provide us with information on which media (magazines and websites) you read and visit. With this survey, we were hoping to gain a better understanding of where and how to reach new and existing customers with our advertising and PR efforts.

In both instances the response rate to our surveys was very high, and we sincerely thank you for your participation. My comments here pertain to the latter survey, and I would like to share some of our findings with you.

Survey Results

• 5500 Sibelius users responded to our survey - this is an extremely high response rate.
• Most of you filled out all questions; most of the questions had a response rate of over 95%

The satisfaction level with the Sibelius product is extremely high and it manifests itself in one of the questions we asked: Would you recommend Sibelius to a friend. 87% of you said you already had, and 35% reported that they were aware of a friend's purchase due to their recommendation. That is a very gratifying statistic. We thank you for your belief in and support of our product.

Nearly 2000 survey respondents took the time to enter specific comments at the end of the survey. These comments ranged from stellar compliments on our products and services, to user specific complaints. I, and several others from the Walnut Creek office read every user comment, and followed up with thousands of them. A few common themes appeared, and I thought I'd touch on them very briefly.

User Information

Some of you brought up concerns regarding our use personal information. Please be assured that we will never sell or share your information with anyone. Our interest is simply to maintain an ongoing dialogue with our users and keep you informed about new products, new services and changes in policy that affect you as a Sibelius user. For complete information of our privacy policy please visit our website at http://www.sibelius.com/documents/privacy.html

Help and Training

Another common question that came up in the survey had to do with technical support. Here are a few points concerning tech support:

• We do not charge for technical support
  
• Phone support is free and available for all products Monday through Friday, 7:00AM through 4:30 PM PST at 925-280-2101
   Toll-free phone support is available for Sibelius 3 and Photoscore Professional (only) for the first 90 days following registration. The toll free number is 888-280-9995.
  
• The Help Center (click here) on our website contains answers to Frequently Asked Questions and a searchable database
  
• We also have a Chat Page (click here) that is a useful tool for obtaining help. It is regularly monitored 24 hours a day by someone from Sibelius who answers customer inquiries. The chat pages are used by Sibelius users world-wide so you may find a Sibelius user in another part of the world answering your question - and don't be surprised if you see Ben or Jonathan Finn answer user inquiries here, they are regular visitors and are interested in user comments. So if you're stuck on something in the middle of a composition at 2:00 AM your time and phone in tech support is not available try our chat pages any time. Please note that you'll need your Sibelius serial number to post your own comments to the chat pages.

Some of you are interested in training. We are in the final stages of completing training materials for Sibelius 3 and should begin training sessions in late August-early September. Those of you who inquired about this will be contacted with training locations and dates as soon as we finalize them. We also post training information on our website, visit by clicking here. 

On behalf of the entire Sibelius team worldwide I'd like to thank you for your enthusiasm and your support of our products and services.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Reilly

President & Chief Operating Officer

Sibelius USA, Inc