Welcome to the blog where I share techniques that help you work faster and more efficiently with Sibelius, so that we can do less and do it better.
Dot Your I’s, Tie Your Notes, and Number Your Players
Continuing the thread of the huge ROI of precise notation, let’s talk about one of the simplest but most crucial practices: marking every entrance with the correct player specificity.
I know—it’s not as thrilling as negative harmony, mediant relationships, or polyrhythmic textures. (I’ve been down that rabbit hole too.) But if you don’t mark these things clearly, others will make decisions for you. And that’s rarely ideal. Plus, it forces you to think about the actual musicians in the orchestra—not just blobs of sound on a score.
The Dynamics of Decision-Making: Mark It or Leave It?
One of my most formative lessons as a budding orchestrator had nothing to do with voicings, colors, interlocking lines, instrument combinations, or any of the fancy things that books—rightfully—cover and that most of the conversation revolves around. It came when I first had someone else doing the copying. Suddenly, I was getting a boatload of questions…