Sibelius or Guitar Pro?

[Babaghanoush]

I own Sibelius 6. I am comfortable with it and use it for other music making work besides bass guitar. I've recently started transcribing a bunch of bass music and putting together exercises for practice. While Sibelius is great for most of my notation needs I'm finding it a bit lacking on the tab side of things. Doe's anyone else think the same about sibelius and would there be any benefit for me to switch to guitar pro for just my guitar tab work? All opinions welcome and thanks.

[walker rosewood]

Sibelius kicks ass. Why would you ever want to use Tab for anything. Especially if you can read standard notation. **clearly I'm biased.

[Babaghanoush]

Because other people reading what I do. Not just me. Also, even though I work with standard notation everyday, I still think tab has its uses.

I do agree that sibelius is great for all other notation.

[Kwesi]

Buy Sibelius bootleg Guitar Pro for those times that you really need it

[walker rosewood]

Isn't there a Sibelius just for guitar? G7 I think it's called. I agree with Kwesi, there are freeware tab programs if you really need it.

[BillyIVbass]

I reviewed Guitar Pro 6. It is a breeze to enter and playback things. You can translate tab to notation or notation to tab etc. on all stringed instruments. I haven't used Sibelius, but give GP a thumbs up.

[KenHR]

There's a free TAB editor called TuxGuitar that can handle your notation needs. It also reads GuitarPro and PowerTab files.

[Babaghanoush]

Originally Posted by KenHR

There's a free TAB editor called TuxGuitar that can handle your notation needs. It also reads GuitarPro and PowerTab files.

Thanks for the tip. I'm checking it out now.

I'm looking for really nice output (since I do work for other people a lot). I can't tell about GP 6's printing capabilities since you can't print with the demo version. The prints from sibelius are great but I'm just tired of messing with some of the problems like slides from grace notes, etc. It takes WAY more time than it should.

[Deathblade Eric]

Originally Posted by Babaghanoush

Thanks for the tip. I'm checking it out now.

I'm looking for really nice output (since I do work for other people a lot). I can't tell about GP 6's printing capabilities since you can't print with the demo version. The prints from sibelius are great but I'm just tired of messing with some of the problems like slides from grace notes, etc. It takes WAY more time than it should.

GP prints nice clean-looking sheets. You might find that Tux has a few issues though. I use both for printing to PDF & Tux has real problems with this:

• It won't display beamed notes properly if they're made up of e.g. quarters & eighths.
• Stopped (i.e. pizzicato) notes don't display correctly
• Triplets are shown using a non-conventional format

GP is no good for PDF output as it won't allow for font embedding, which means that someone that doesn't have GP installed will recieve a page of utter garbage.

For a 'classy' or 'trad' look, try Tux combined with another freeware prog called Lilypond. Tux will export to *.ly format, & Lilypond then converts it into its own score style.

Here's a few sample PDFs that should illustrate it all:

Tux with Stops & Compound Beams: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip_Flop_Fly-Tux.pdf
GP with Stops & Compound Beams: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip_Flop_Fly-GPro.pdf
Tux >> Lilypond: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip...y-Lilypond.pdf

Pete.

[Febs]

Originally Posted by Deathblade Eric

Here's a few sample PDFs that should illustrate it all:

Tux with Stops & Compound Beams: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip_Flop_Fly-Tux.pdf
GP with Stops & Compound Beams: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip_Flop_Fly-GPro.pdf
Tux >> Lilypond: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8453031/Flip...y-Lilypond.pdf

Pete.

I think the real problem that you're having with beaming is that you're trying to write a song that has 4 beats per measure in 6/8, which has six beats per measure, so each beat of the song is falling over 1 1/2 beats of your transcription.

Try writing it in 4/4 with each beat being a quarter note and the basic rhythm figure for each beat being dotted eighth, sixteenth. You could also just write it in 4/4 with all eighth notes and indicate "shuffle feel."

You could also try writing it in 12/8 with each beat being three eighth notes, so that the basic rhythm figure for each beat would be quarter, eighth.

[Infidelity]

Originally Posted by Febs

I think the real problem that you're having with beaming is that you're trying to write a song that has 4 beats per measure in 6/8, which has six beats per measure, so each beat of the song is falling over 1 1/2 beats of your transcription.

Try writing it in 4/4 with each beat being a quarter note and the basic rhythm figure for each beat being dotted eighth, sixteenth. You could also just write it in 4/4 with all eighth notes and indicate "shuffle feel."

You could also try writing it in 12/8 with each beat being three eighth notes, so that the basic rhythm figure for each beat would be quarter, eighth.

very true.. lol

[Deathblade Eric]

Originally Posted by Febs

I think the real problem that you're having with beaming is that you're trying to write a song that has 4 beats per measure in 6/8, which has six beats per measure, so each beat of the song is falling over 1 1/2 beats of your transcription.

Doesn't matter if it's 6/8, 4/4 or 27/19.75 tbh. Tux will fail to reproduce compound beams & stopped notes accurately when printing to PDF using Adobe Acrobat.

It displays just fine on the screen & has no issues printing to paper. I've mentioned the issues to the Tux developers on their forum, & can only hope that they get sorted for a future release.

The beams & stops are there. Opening a page of the PDF in Adobe Illustrator & magnifying the erroneous notation reveals that there is a vestigial tail & a tiny tiny stop. Both of these can be corrected, but it's a PITA if there are lots of 'em.

As I stated in my OP, GPro & Lilypond do not exhibit these defects.

Pete.