Just to add something to the original topic of this discussion:
Sibelius has not been bought by Digidesign, but by AVID which happens to also own digidesign (as CM already pointed out). so there's no reason to assume that it will become PT only. Quite the opposite, actually, I think that they will add timecode capabilities (what with AVID being a video company), so that Sibelius will finally be able to integrate with sequencers (any sequencer, that is). Sibelius can already print tc into the score, so it might as sync to it. I am dreaming of VST integration, too, but one step at a time.

At least I hope that this will be the result from the AVID buyout.
Constantin

Wouldn't it be cool if Sibelius could rewire into a sequencer? So you could do something like compose on your seq. and the notes would naturally automatically transfer into Sib. You could put all the dynamics and stuff on the score window, which would be Sib, and it would control the MIDI playback - or, put velocity/volume envelopes on your MIDI track and have it replicate as hairpins/cres./dim etc on the score window!

Not only do you have perfect integration with the music sounding the same on both your sequencer and Sib, but you finish both the composition AND the notation at the same time!

Ok, I'm writing to Sibelius..... [:P]

@Jonny Mantle said:

Wouldn't it be cool if Sibelius could rewire into a sequencer? So you could do something like compose on your seq. and the notes would naturally automatically transfer into Sib. You could put all the dynamics and stuff on the score window, which would be Sib, and it would control the MIDI playback - or, put velocity/volume envelopes on your MIDI track and have it replicate as hairpins/cres./dim etc on the score window!

Not only do you have perfect integration with the music sounding the same on both your sequencer and Sib, but you finish both the composition AND the notation at the same time!

That is a good idea! It would also be nice if the link was completely bi-directional, so that you could enter a passage in Sibelius, and have it automatically show up in your sequencer. Some things are just soooo much easier to figure out in score, IMO -- voice leading, harmony, orchestration, etc... oh, and really tricky rhythmic passages - quintuplets, septuplets, and so on, which are a pain to enter on most sequencers, and which my crap keyboard skills make impossible for me to play!

J.

Guys, before you all get too excited please remember that Sibelius_is_not_a_sequencer. Therefore it does not work in a linear way. In a sequencer notation is derived from the MIDI, in a notation program it is the other way round. In order for this to change in Sibelius it would probably need a total re-write.

DG

As an addendum, the latest PT version has a "send to Sibelius" button. This sends a MIDI file of your current session to Sibelius. Two things to note:

1) You already have to have Sibelius on your computer; it does not give you any sort of "free" version.
2) There is no ongoing communication between the programs. All it is doing is bypassing the export MIDI file, import into Sibelius steps.

DG

Ah, there's always someone to poo on your potatoes. shame on you [:(] .

OK, I'll let you wallow around in ignorance next time. [8-)]

DG

Well, I don't pretend to know what I don't. Was only an ideal type of integration, can appreciate that technically it would be... well, don't know, but assuming from your knowledge the operative words would be a minimum of "very very hard if not impossible". I'm still in total amazement that a computer can even boot up and do something on its own because of someone typing weird language, let alone give someone the ability to sequence, mix and master music! I can only just manage to change a lightbulb. And even then i don't know how the darn thing works.

But then I guess it takes people like me that don't know anything technical to make the suggestions, because my thoughts are based on a "wouldn't it be nice if.." scenario, rather than knowing what technology can currently achieve. Helps to push boundaries. IMHO.

@Jonny Mantle said:

Well, I don't pretend to know what I don't. Was only an ideal type of integration, can appreciate that technically it would be... well, don't know, but assuming from your knowledge the operative words would be a minimum of "very very hard if not impossible". I'm still in total amazement that a computer can even boot up and do something on its own because of someone typing weird language, let alone give someone the ability to sequence, mix and master music! I can only just manage to change a lightbulb. And even then i don't know how the darn thing works.

But then I guess it takes people like me that don't know anything technical to make the suggestions, because my thoughts are based on a "wouldn't it be nice if.." scenario, rather than knowing what technology can currently achieve. Helps to push boundaries. IMHO.

You're quite right that we should always ask for the impossible. However, understanding how something that already exists works can make a difference in how we phrase requests. I have found that what will almost certainly get a "can't be done" can often be worked around if explained in a different way. I, like many others, would desperately like to have a notation "front end" to my sequencer that actually bears some relationship to music. However, unless either the sequencer manufacturers start to take notation more seriously or Sibelius branches out into sequencer land, I'm not too hopeful. Maybe in the future there will be a proper plug-in for ProTools that will allow some degree of what we currently do in Sibelius to happen, but as PT is currently lightyears behind the other major sequencers, it would still make this option unusable for me.

DG

@DG said:

Guys, before you all get too excited please remember that Sibelius_is_not_a_sequencer. Therefore it does not work in a linear way. In a sequencer notation is derived from the MIDI, in a notation program it is the other way round. In order for this to change in Sibelius it would probably need a total re-write.

DG

As a hackish, psuedo-programmer myself, I'd have to say that I don't quite agree with this... not 100% anyway. I understand what you're saying, but ultimately the music resides in a data structure of some kind in the software, which is neither notation nor midi -- it's just data, formatted in whatever way the developers decided would work best for their app. Without a doubt it contains info about start time, note length, pitch, and velocity, and if two developers have access to the same source, then they should be able to devise a way of sharing or transfering that data structure. So the impossible is not so impossible as it seems, I would say. I know that Sibelius has considered a VST plugin version, but that the technical difficulties are considerable -- and that is a genuinely difficult situation, because plugins have *very* little knowledge of the host environment, particularly in terms of the musical "future", as it were (they can't "look ahead", afaik). But Sibelius have considered it... However, as with many of us, my concern is that they'll abandon such work, in favor of some form of tight integration with Pro Tools only. This is not necessarily from some form of corporate evil, but simply because they can share knowledge on a source-code level. I suppose, in a utopian world, they could integrate OSC support into Sibelius, so that it could be controlled directly by a wide variety of other applications and/or plugins. But I doubt that will happen, as they would also need to provide some control protocol that OSC apps could use for accessing Sibelius' functions...

The best form of communication we could hope for, I suspect, would be some form of plugin "bridge" between a vst/au plugin and Sibelius -- a little bit like the communication going on between the vst/au VI plugins and the vsl-server, or between the Melodyne Bridge and Melodyne. But this is still quite limited, as plugins cannot look ahead, as mentioned above... Dunno... I don't think they can manage anything particularly sophisticated for just any old host, but they could manage something with Pro Tools.
I can't see myself ever buying Pro Tools, though.

J.