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Many years ago I bought Sibelius music notation program version 1.4, I believe; it was later updated to version 2.

I bought it using an educational discount using my membership of the NAJE, National association of Jazz Educators. (That organization no longer exists.)

My wife uses Sibelius First, a free program from Avid Sibelius, to learn her vocal part in the singing group she performs in. Somehow along the way I must have deleted Sibelius First. My version of Sibelius was too old to handle the files she would receive to practice with.

My task was to solve this issue. I initially bought the 'middle' version of Sibelius and installed that. I learned online at the Sibelius community that I could have bought the Sibelius Ultimate program for less if I could use an educational discount. My wife, as it happens, teaches at a college, though not a music college. No matter, I jumped through a few hoops and bought Sibelius Ultimate (after first receiving a refund for my initial purchase).

The price difference between a regular price and an educational discount is staggering. I believe the Sibelius Ultimate price was €90 plus VAT.

My needs for notional software are meager, I just create the occasional lead sheet.

Just passin' this on. As you were ...

I think that price might be for an annual plan which allows updates for a period of one year. I don't think that will be a perpetual license price. This means to keep using Sibelius you would have to renew the license each year. If you have a perpetual license then even if you don't renew your software will still continue to function. It would just mean you would not be receiving the latest updates. Their licensing scheme is not straightforward! Steinberg's Dorico is much better option now I think.

Have you tried musescore ? It's open source, free and very good at creating lead sheets. It is no Sibelius but you can't beat the bang for the no buck.

funkycornwall, your description of the licensing is accurate, I have free updates \ upgrades for one year and I can continue to use the program forever though unless I renew my subscription, I'll be using the same program without the updates.

I've been using Sibelius version 2 from 15 or 20 years ago without any updates and for my needs, it was more than adequate.

What I found interesting, the same download file is used for all three versions of Sibelius. The differences occur with the specific version being bought, or with the free version, being used.

halherta, no, I have not used Musescore. I was locked into ordering Sibelius since my wife needed that program to open the files she receives from her singing group.

FWIW --

I bought "Sibelius First" -- a limited-features Sibelius -- a few years ago. Outright purchase, no annual fee.

Avid no longer has that option. There's a new "Sibelius First" -- different from mine -- and it's only available through an annual license.

So I have precious, orphan software, that I'll keep using until it stops working.

I've been fighting with the Sibelius user interface since I got it. I don't use it enough to get really comfortable with it, and often the program's "smarts" interfere with what I want to do.

OTOH, "scoring" is a complicated job; maybe there's no simple interface that's flexible enough to do the work.

I might look at MuseScore again. But I think its user interface might be worse than Sibelius'.

I went through every notation programme I could find. Hardly any would work on windows 7 with me pressing the buttons. NOTHING could i get my head around to make it worthwhile to pay for, or even download.

The only one which satisfied my level of impatience was Flat, a French software developer which is very intuitive. It costs £39 for a year's license, and is so intuitive, I never got to read the instructions. I use it most conveniently on a Chromebook. You can try it for free for a certain time.

I've updated and rewritten 12 original copies now. Got 'till April to finish the job off . . . . .:)

I notated my last few reharms using MuseScore. Works extremely well. And is free.

I’ve done several large projects in Musescore with good results but I’m still frenemies with the interface. Once I’m in the “Musescore zone”, it’s smooth sailing; it just takes a bit of re-learning of it’s idiosyncrasies when I haven’t used it in awhile.

Hi Dave,

I have Sibelius 7.5 and gave it a good go. It is NOT at all user friendly nor intuitive.
Interestingly, the core team that developed Sibelius originally ended up at Steinberg. They released a new music notation program called Dorico which is supposed to be the Sibelius core team's attempt to build notation software learning from their own mistakes.

Might be worth looking into https://www.dorico.com/

Kind regards,

Doug

I'm strictly MuseScore. It does everything I need, it's quite stable now, and it's free. None of these programs are all that intuitive or user friendly, simply because musical notation is a non-trivial task. They all do about as well as they can....

I use Sibelius 7. It is not always easy to use, but it works well. I do not use it enough to justify paying for a later version unless I could purchase an inexpensive upgrade. I spent enough on the original IMO.

When I first bought Sibelius 1.4 over 15 years ago, I spent some time in the beginning reading and learning their program. I'm fairly comfortable with the program though one drawback, jazz chord notation. The program is more set up for classical music and not really for jazz notation (though I'm sure they will state otherwise).

For me, a Cm7-5, Cm7b5, or C half dim 7, could simply be written as Cø with the ø as superscript and without a 7 (as the 7 is understood). I'm forced to type in Chalfdim and then Cø7 appears. I find those little things annoying. I'm not going to spend an inordinate amount of time to save a few keystrokes considering my use of the program is rather limited and rather infrequent though.

I just looked at my bank information online and I paid €95.59 (that's including VAT) for Sibelius Ultimate. So, for anyone who can apply for an educational discount, it's not that much at all (considering I was happy enough with version 1.4).

I was also given a handful of additional downloads as well. I could download an entire orchestra sound set but I'd never use it.

This is true with most professional software.... heavy use of Avid and Adobe in the schools, by teachers and students builds and maintains use as adults. I always tell students to get their software BEFORE they graduate and pretty much the same offers are there for instructors.