Mac|Life audio software RSS Feed

Ableton Live 7

David Biedny — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:19:14 -0500

Live's interface is a single-window affair, clear and uncluttered despite its depth.

The market for audio recording software is vast, ranging from GarageBand to Pro Tools, with a lot of stuff in between. Now in its seventh iteration, Ableton Live started as a tool designed primarily for—surprise—live performances, but over the years, has morphed into a popular tool for studio and recording work as well. Ableton Live 7 is not revolutionary but evolutionary. With this latest version, Live has matured into a well-rounded, integrated environment with extensive automation and a unique approach to the musical process.

Live allows you to create songs by triggering MIDI sequences, sounds, loops, or mixes of multiple tracks on the fly, while providing an extensive toolkit for more traditionally minded musicians. The improvements to the latest version are all over the map, but let’s start with a core improvement: The internal mixing of multiple audio tracks now happens with 64 bits of precision. The additional horsepower makes the final mix positively sparkle, and the new dithering techniques for downsampling audio tracks to CD-quality, 16-bit sound are truly sweet. The built-in equalizer also offers a new high-quality mode that uses Live 7’s 64-bit mojo to make the most of pinpoint EQ tweaks.

Hardcore audio enthusiasts will really enjoy the new feedback compressor, which delivers a truly luscious vintage-style effect that works wonders on drum tracks, vocals, and most any other kind of acoustic material. Serious musicians will love the ability to insert multiple time-signatures into a Live project, opening up the doors to using the app for more complex musical compositions. These additions are just the beginning. Ableton has added many features in response to requests from longtime users, including tempo nudge, video export, the ability to edit multiple automation lanes, and hardware synths and effects routing—in short, more than we could ever hope to cover here.

Rhythm is the foundation of all music, and the new Drum Racks module beefs up the beat, allowing you to quickly set up a virtual drum machine with a full complement of sounds, percussion or otherwise (including instances of Audio Units or VST synth plug-ins), as individual drum-kit pieces. Everything can be controlled via your computer keyboard or external controller devices. We tried Ableton Live 7 out with the M-Audio Trigger Finger, with great success. You can import REX loop files (the native file format of Propellerhead Software’s Reason), analyze and perfectly chop the loop into single “slices,” and then drop them into a new Drum Rack as a playable instrument. There’s a must-see video on Ableton’s website that does a great job showing off the vast creative potential of Drum Racks (www.ableton.com/live-7-whats-new).

The Suite version of Live includes an entire library of totally new instruments, but if you already have a decent selection of Audio Units synths, you’ll probably want to save some cash and go with the standard version. The issue we have with the Suite is that, for $800, it just doesn’t offer the amazing variety of sounds that can be found in Apple’s Logic Studio, which contains just about every soft synth you’ll ever need, for a lot less money.

The bottom line. If you’re looking for the best bargain in a well-rounded Mac MIDI/audio editor, Apple’s Logic Studio is still the best buy, and we can’t say we’d recommend Live as a replacement. That said, Live is a unique app that takes a very different approach to the creative process. There’s nothing quite like it, and once you’ve used it, you will agree. Existing Live users will find many reasons to upgrade to the new version, and for the curious, Ableton offers a downloadable 14-day demo version on its website.

COMPANY: Ableton

CONTACT: www.ableton.com

PRICE: $499 (download), $599 (box, with Essential Instrument Collection library); Suite edition $799 (download), $999 (box)

REQUIREMENTS: G4, G5, or Intel Mac; OS 10.3.9; 512MB RAM

Noticeably enhanced audio quality. Totally bangin’ Drum Racks. Unique live tools. Universal binary.

Relatively high price for Suite bundle

First Look: Can You Hear Me Now?

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:24:47 -0500

Choose Music > Pop-H when you're rocking out to Abba with headphones. Sure, it's easy enough to do, but we were too lazy to change Hear's preset to Hip Hop / Rap-H when the song switched to Akon's Smack That.

Even nonaudiophiles can appreciate an app like JoeSoft's Hear, which, for $49.95, boosts the sound quality of your entire digital music library - and any other audio you care to listen to on your Mac.

After an admittedly quick look at the app, however, we found ourselves wishing JoeSoft could build in a few more features that cater to lazy mousers like us. To wit: With its dozens of music presets - from Alternative / Punk to Hip Hop/Rap to Techno, all for both speakers and headphones, choosing the one you want quickly is, well, a challenge.

One potential solution is to tell Hear to choose a preset based on a song's genre as dictated by iTunes. We don't trust iTunes to always get that right, however, and we don't have time to go through and update each song's genre in our entire library.

Music presets anyone? We appreciate Hear's depth, but this is too many preset choices! You can set the app to change the preset based on a song's genre as categorized by iTunes, but you're trusting iTunes to get the genre right, which it doesn't always do.

In our automated Fantasy Land, Hear would be able to "read" each song's audio profile and select an appropriate preset to optimize the sound. But back to reality. You can edit all pre-existing presets in any number of ways, which for non-audio experts actually serves as a fun crash course in the concepts behind editing and manipulating digital audio.

One interesting feature that we haven't had enough free time to explore is the BW tab (which, randomly, stands for brainwaves. The idea behind this feature is to filter your favorite music so that listening to it promotes relaxation. We don't pretend to understand how Hear does this, and we're not even sure we noticed the difference it made on our music when we toggled it on and off. But it's an interesting idea, and relaxation, deep concentration, even meditation, are all things most denizens of the modern world could use more of.

Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Allison Krauss singing folk music is pretty relaxing, but Hear's BW tab can help us go even deeper into a state of calm.

JoeSoft offers a full-version free trial of Hear on its website, so you don't have anything to lose by giving it a try. If anyone out there can meditate to death metal using the BW tab, we want to hear about it.

Look for a full review of Hear 1.01 on our site soon, and in the August print issue of Mac|Life.

Modartt Pianoteq 2

David Biedny — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:08:29 -0500

While there are lots of controls for tweaking the sound, you’ll fall in love with Pianoteq by just playing the darn thing.

While the digital music world is ruled by gnarly synthesizers, decked-out drum machines, and spacey sound effects, most musicians will tell you that the Holy Grail of software is one that can emulate the good old acoustic piano. Sampled piano instruments typically require sample libraries that eat up between 15 and 30 gigabytes of hard drive space, and are constrained by the limitations of sampling technology. Well, fear not: A group of French geniuses have come up with the ultimate nonsampled piano, and it’s downright luscious.

The very first thing you’ll notice when you install Pianoteq is its tiny footprint—the entire plug-in weighs in at around 16MB, which is ridiculously small for any software instrument, much less a piano. Copy protection consists of a serial number and Internet activation, and installation is effortless.

We tested Pianoteq as an Audio Units plug-in inside of GarageBand, Logic, and Ableton Live, and its responsiveness and wonderful aural quality thrilled us immediately. While nothing is likely to ever match the full majesty and presence of an actual Steinway, Pianoteq comes close. Just plug your own weighted 88-key controller and sustain pedal into your Mac, and you’ve got an awesome piano that never needs to be tuned or polished. It’s a glorious experience, and your audience probably won’t believe that you’re not stroking actual ivories.

There’s a decent amount of control over the particulars of the piano sound, with a nice handful of presets to get you started. Want to change the size of the virtual piano? Open or closed lid, or perhaps half-open? The app gives you lots of options for changing the sound of the instrument in subtle, and not-so-subtle, ways.

The hammers that strike the strings in a real piano have a significant influence on the overall tone and timbre, and Pianoteq delivers deep control for tweaking the dynamics of the hammers and how they interact with the virtual strings. It’s not difficult to quickly come up with extreme versions of your piano that start to sound like a marimba. Other utilitarian tools let you tweak the overall tone; for example, the built-in graphic equalizer and reverb both offer the perfect pinch of sonic seasoning for your sound.

If you don’t want to wrap your brain around the science of piano engineering, grab some of the free presets from the Pianoteq website that deliver renditions of everything from the venerable Yamaha CP-80 electric piano to a 270-year-old harpsichord, each with its own unique tones and voicings. The range of sounds that emanates from this instrument is quite stunning, and eminently useful in a musical context. It’s clear that the folks who created this marvel did so out of a deep love for the piano, and this is really what makes Pianoteq shine.

Every nuance of the sound of Pianoteq is created on the fly, and as you might expect, this places a definitive strain on a Mac’s processor, but even so, we found it to be highly efficient. Holding down a sustain pedal and running our fingers up and down the keyboard started to tax our 2.0GHz Dual Power Mac G5 (with 2GB of RAM), but our 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (with 3GB of RAM) had no problems keeping up with dense chords and sustained notes.

The bottom line. If you’re using your Mac to make music, you need to stop reading this review right now and download the Pianoteq 45-day demo. This is one of the most enticing and useful software instruments in existence, and even though it’s not cheap, it’s a lot easier to lug to a gig than a real piano—and sounds about as good. Did we mention that it never goes out of tune?

COMPANY: Modartt

CONTACT: www.pianoteq.com

PRICE: 249 Euros (about $384 at press time)

REQUIREMENTS: 2GHz or faster G5 or Intel processor, Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, 512MB RAM

Outstanding sonic quality. Decent processor load and memory footprint. Terrific value. Universal binary.

Nothing, really.

iPlayMusic Beginner Guitar Lessons and Play Music Together

Michael Ansaldo — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:57:54 -0500

Detailed videos show proper finger and hand position from multiple angles.

The mention of guitar lessons probably conjures images of hunching over an acoustic guitar in the back room of a strip-mall music shop while an aging hippie prods your unwilling fingers to contort to the chords of “Kumbaya.” Fortunately, iPlayMusic has a more effective and humane way to teach you guitar with Beginner Guitar Lessons and Play Music Together.

Both of these iPlayMusic applications offer a series of instructional videos in an iLife-style interface that features basic video controls plus a loop function that lets you repeat any video without your fingers having to leave your guitar. The tempo control can speed up or slow down the videos without altering the pitch, so you can follow along at your own pace. A simple file navigation system organizes the videos into four sections: Get Started offers a video tutorial on the program. The Lessons section demonstrates the basics, from how to hold your guitar to specific chords to strumming techniques and more. Reference offers a quick look at chord charts and instrument maintenance tips. And Songs features the song lessons themselves, with each offered in three formats, including a full song lesson with a complete band playing the composition, a guitar-only track that lets you learn just the guitar part, and a Jam Pack that features the song as a karaoke-style track that you can accompany with your own guitar and voice.

Beginner Guitar Lessons targets the fledgling guitarist with nearly 80 interactive videos including chord how-tos, practice drills, demonstrations on how to alter rhythm, and even riffing styles for different genres of music. You get plenty of opportunities to practice these techniques too, with a song-lesson selection that culls from blues, country, folk, kids’ music, reggae, and rock (though, with the emphasis on cuts from Bob Marley, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, you get the sense that the spirit of that aging hippie instructor is alive and well here).

Next, tell us about the wipers!

Play Music Together is aimed at parents who want to learn to play guitar and sing along with their kids, so the material offered is more fundamental and it’s delivered in a more playful presentation: The teacher from Beginner Guitar Lessons is joined here by his puppet sidekick Capo (named for the bar one attaches to a guitar’s fretboard to raise the pitch of the strings, get it?). Each of the half-dozen kids’ classics on the lesson plan, including “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and I’ve Been Working On the Railroad,” is presented in the same three formats used in Beginner Guitar Lessons, as well as in a karaoke-style sing-along version starring Capo and featuring scrolling chords and lyrics.

Both Beginner Guitar Lessons and Play Music Together allow you to export any of the videos to your iPod, and every song features a GarageBand project file so you can add your newly developed chops to a complete recording.

iPlayMusic’s applications aren’t the only way to learn guitar, but they’re the most effective we’ve seen in a while, and they make the process as fun as it should be. Whether you’ve got your sights set on the stage or just a family-room jamboree, these programs will give you a solid foundation for six-string success.

The bottom line. Regardless of your age or aspirations, iPlayMusic’s guitar lessons will have you making music in no time.

COMPANY: iPlayMusic

CONTACT: www.iplaymusic.com

PRICE: $39.95 (Beginner Guitar Lessons), $29.95 (Play Music Together)

REQUIREMENTS: G4 or later or Intel processor, Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, 512MB RAM, GarageBand 3 or later, iTunes 6.0.2 or later, QuickTime 7.0.4 or later, 10GB free disk space

Easy to follow instructional videos. Comprehensive lessons. Gets you playing songs quickly. Universal binary.

We’ve never seen a less charismatic puppet.

Steinberg Media Technologies Groove Agent 3

David Biedny — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:37:41 -0500

Groove Agent 3 lets you synch up two different drum modules, for extremely dense and
lush rhythms.

Anyone who makes—or listens to—music is well aware that, in the end, rhythm is the thing that keeps it all together and makes it gel. If you create your own tunes, you might feel constrained by using existing drum loops, and that’s where Groove Agent enters the picture: It’s a unique software drum machine that incorporates some innovative MIDI and sampled drum technology, and the result is one seriously groovy virtual skin beater.

Groove Agent is installed as a standalone application, an Audio Units plug-in, and a Steinberg VST plug-in. This last option will only appeal to those using Ableton Live or Steinberg’s own Cubase sequencing software, as they’re the only ones really capable of loading and using VST plug-ins on the Mac. The standalone version is not very useful in a practical sense, so we’ll focus this review on the AU version.

Our first gripe: Groove Agent is one of the last Mac music plug-ins that still requires a USB protection dongle, and to our surprise, one is not automatically included in the box—you’ll have to shell out an additional $30 for the privilege of using the software. In this day and age of software activation, this is no longer acceptable, and while we totally understand the problem of piracy, it’s clear that software-only activation is totally workable.

That aside, the interface for Groove Agent is clean and intuitive, and you’ll be floored to find over 100 different types of drumming styles spanning a wide range of musical flavors, from jazz, Latin, bossa nova, and blues to hard rock, dance, rap, and just about everything else. Each of the 108 styles has 25 levels of pattern complexity, starting at the most stripped-down instrumentation (think time-keeping beats) and gradually building up to insanely complex arrangements of drum sounds. Groove Agent will play fills between variations of a pattern, either when a new pattern of a style is selected, or automatically at specific intervals. Each style has a custom set of sampled drum sounds perfectly tailored to the music, and you can mix and match styles and samples, opening up a vast creative palette. You can load up your own samples, and there’s even a built-in compressor and equalizer, perfect for punching up the sound and making the drums stand out in a mix. You get extensive audio routing options, allowing each separate component of a drum kit (bass drum, cymbals, toms, snare, and so on) to be sent to its own output channel, perfect for exercising absolute control over the mix of an entire percussion performance.

Version 3 introduces some sweet new sounds, including 15 new styles (each with
25 different patterns) played by a real drummer in a module dubbed Special Agent, as well as the ability to have two different drum patterns playing simultaneously. The overall sonic quality is stellar, and all of the styles are quite useful for making music.

Our other major issue with Groove Agent 3 is that the automation feature is poorly supported by most recording software—we tested it with Ableton Live, Logic, and GarageBand, and found that we could successfully change patterns by sending MIDI changes with a keyboard, but we were unable to tweak any other settings and have the changes recorded into sequences. This is a frustrating limitation that Steinberg needs to fix yesterday.

The bottom line. We took a full star off our score for the hardware protection hassle, and if Steinberg fixes the automation issues and removes the dongle, we’ll happily give this outstanding plug-in 5 stars. If you make music and don’t happen to play like Buddy Rich (or Neil Peart), you’ll definitely want to give Groove Agent 3 an audition.

COMPANY: Steinberg Media Technologies

CONTACT: www.steinberg.net

PRICE: $249, $29.99 extra for Steinberg hardware key, upgrades $89.99 to $129

REQUIREMENTS: G5 or later or Intel CPU, Mac OS 10.4 or later, 1GB RAM, Steinberg USB hardware key

Outstanding range of drums styles and sounds. Special Agent module is next best thing to a real drummer. New ability to load custom samples significantly extends creative possibilities. Universal binary.

Hardware dongle, automation limitations with many sequencers.

For Those About to Rock, We Be-Mac You

Eugene Robinson — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:47:43 -0500

D’arby Rose (with Stratocaster) is a few years senior to some of her fellow rock campers.

During the course of human events, it sometimes becomes necessary to bring the rock—and we cannot bring the rock without the hallowed tools of our trade. So we summon our guitars and amps, our boots and leather, our Pete Townsend windmills and Janis Joplin caterwauls. And now we also enlist our Macs—for they bestow furious powers of transformation upon those who seek rock star greatness. Yes, Macs are even more potent than cowbells.

Consider the DIY career stylings of D’arby Rose, singer-guitarist of the As Ifs, a band that most certainly has the coolest name in the entire history of rock, ever. At the gravelly old age of 17, Rose has already produced all the must-have media assets that one would expect of a serious punk-rock frontwoman. She’s got the demo CD. She’s got the music video. She’s got the website with the obligatory music downloads and calendar of live appearances. And she, along with drummer Lily B, created all of this stuff with nothing but a MacBook.
And we do mean nothing but a MacBook.

The As Ifs record and edit all their songs directly in GarageBand. Their music video, “Radioactives,” was also a MacBook-only affair: The girls used an iSight camera to capture footage, and then edited the entire 02:07 video—rapid-fire cuts, gonzo special effects and all—in iMovie. D’arby Rose seems blissfully unaware of her hardware and software upgrade options (she couldn’t name a single prosumer-level editing tool during our interview), but entry-level Mac gear hasn’t stopped her from recording a respectable oeuvre of eight songs. She also has a Jack Black level of confidence in her band’s awesomeness: “We’re, uh, pretty amazing. At first, everyone was like [in a patronizing adult voice], ‘Oh, that’s cute—they’re playing music.’ But then we started playing shows, and people realized this was serious.”

The documentarians: Shane King (left) and Arne Johnson.

Cue the second act of this “The Mac Is the Creative Center of Everything” fable. For the last six years, D’arby Rose has attended Portland’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Camp for Girls, which is the focus of a new documentary titled Girls Rock! by filmmakers Arne Johnson and Shane King. As much as the As Ifs have tamed the lo-fi end of the DIY spectrum, the two documentarians have tackled the hi-fi end—and, in doing so, they demonstrate just how much polish is possible with the Mac gear that’s sitting in most of our homes.

The movie follows the experiences of four girls, ages 7 to 17, as they form bands, write songs, learn instruments, and most of all transform themselves at camp, which is essentially a comprehensive learning academy for aspiring rock stars. The final cut of Girls Rock! runs 90 minutes, but Johnson and King accumulated 250 hours of material during their filming in 2004. This caused problems that just a single Mac couldn’t fix.

Dig it: With such a daunting wealth of footage, the filmmakers were forced to enlist two Macs and a third human editor (Diana J. Brodie) to get their movie ready for film festival submissions. The three auteurs broke into two teams, and their shifts typically lasted 12 hours on a nonstop, 24-hour work cycle. Their software weapon of choice? Apple’s Final Cut.

“I was usually working on longer-form, more structural changes on an iMac,” says Johnson. “And Shane and Diana were doing more finishing-type work on a Power Mac. Countless problems arose, because we had to have two entirely separate hard drive arrays with all of our media duplicated. We would trade program files back and forth, but had constant problems with misnamed files, clips reconnecting to the wrong files, name changes we had forgotten about, and so on—not to mention that every time one of us wanted to capture a new clip, the other had to also.”

After Johnson would finish a 12-hour shift of what he calls “unediting,” King and Brodie would begin massaging the footage into something resembling a movie. Johnson points out that if Final Cut Server had been available when they were in production, the two-squad approach to workflow would have run much more smoothly. Says Johnson: “Final Cut Server would’ve pretty much solved everything by allowing us to collaborate on the same set of files over a LAN, and to keep all of our work in one place. We also, obviously, had a bit of a nightmare with media management spread across two computers, and this would have been greatly relieved.”

Three weeks of intense workflow saw the filmmakers wrangling their footage into a trailer—and, more significantly, an invite to the Independent Feature Project (IFP), a big-biz shindig in which the team emerged as the belles of a very rarefied ball. The IFP yielded 19 meetings in two days. King and Johnson met executives from HBO, MTV, and Showtime (among others), and eventually signed a deal for an independent theatrical release. Girls Rock! opens March 7 in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, so perhaps by the time you read this, people will be taking in the surprisingly not-so-strange spectacle of 7-year-olds bringing the rock.

“I pretty much learned how to edit while we were on the project,” says Johnson, “and that’s a testament to the ease and power of Final Cut. When I first started dabbling in editing, it was on Adobe Premiere, and I gave up, deciding editing probably wasn’t for me. But now I’ve coedited a feature documentary and work fairly consistently as a video editor.”

As for D’arby Rose, she’s scheduled to work as a roadie at next summer’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Camp for Girls, bringing the rock and moral support to the incoming cadettes. “I’ve learned so much about who I am from the women who work at camp,” she says. “And now I want to be one of those women who supports the girls.”

URLs of Rock
The As Ifs’ most rocking website www.theasifs.com, The rocked-out home of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Camp for Girls www.girlsrockcamp.org
King and Johnson’s rockumentary www.girlsrockmovie.com

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 Kontrol Edition

David Biedny — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:05:27 -0600

The Rig Kontrol 3 pedal requires a Mac host.

The Holy Grail of the electric guitar involves a single magical box that replaces racks of gear and puddles of pedals, with no compromise to quality, accuracy and flexibility. Guitar Rig 3 is a significant evolution in digital guitar hardware and software. It could easily serve as the cornerstone of a completely digital guitar setup.

The Guitar Rig 3 Kontrol Edition consists of the software, which is also available separately for $339 and can be used as an Audio Units effects plug-in, and the Rig Kontrol 3 pedal, which combines full switching and control of any and all of the software’s many modules and features with a complete analog-digital interface. The Rig Kontrol 3 sports high-quality, 24-bit, 192KHz in and out; two input channels with separate gain knobs; a headphone jack with volume control; a stereo pair of balanced quarter-inch jacks; and MIDI-in and -out ports. There is also a pair of external foot-pedal controller inputs, extending the live performance potential. The Kontrol gets its power from the USB 2.0 connection (USB 1.0 doesn’t fly), so you need a Mac host. It’s a cinch to program the eight switches to modify any aspect of the many controls of the amps and effects, and the pedal is sturdy enough for the rigors of the stage.

The brand new Modifiers let you change and modulate any amp or effect setting.

The software emulates four new amp models, bringing the total to a cool dozen. All the bases are covered, from clean Fenders to ultra-dirty Marshall and German boutique offerings, and the amps are eminently usable and fit well into an overall song mix. Purists may argue that the amp emulations are not spot-on to the real thing, but we found the range and quality of the individual amp models outstanding, with convincing overdrive breakup and air around the sound. When you select a specific amp, a matching speaker cabinet is automatically inserted into the chain, and you can mix and match different amps, speaker cabinets, and microphones to your heart’s content.

Guitar Rig 3 includes great new effects, including a cool re-creation of the venerable Roland Space Echo, a tape-based delay and echo unit legendary in the musical universe. There’s the Delay Man delay, a simulation of the funky Memory Man analog delay from Electro-Harmonix. Mix in the outstanding range of distortion and fuzz effects (11 in total), the luscious modulators, the perfect emulation of the Digitech Whammy pitch shifter, a variety of equalization and filter effects, and a decent Wah (finally!), and you have a one-stop shop of tonal tools ranging from bread-and-butter to bizarre, and you can control everything via the Kontrol hardware.

The bottom line. Guitar Rig 3 is a truly exciting turnkey solution for electric guitarists looking to replace the spaghetti nightmare of cables and foot pedals. While there are some pedals we’d still love to see emulated, you’d be hard-pressed to exhaust the vast array of possibilities to be found in Guitar Rig 3.

COMPANY: Native Instruments

CONTACT: www.native-instruments.com
PRICE: $599

REQUIREMENTS: 1.4GHz G4 or faster or 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo, Mac OS 10.4 or later, 512MB RAM

Excellent range of amps and effects. Kontrol Rig hardware does everything. Fantastic audio quality. Universal binary.

Nothing really.

Sibelius 5

Trevor Middleton — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:26:12 -0600

Sibelius 5 has an uncluttered interface.

When most people think of the intersection of Macs and music, they think of synthesizers, MIDI, and apps like Logic Pro. But some musicians like to score their music the old-fashioned way—on paper, with musical notes written on a staff. And to do that on a Mac, there’s Sibelius.

Sibelius 5 is a hefty product in every way, with a clearly written 156-page handbook and a 632-page reference manual. Even if you’ve never worked with Sibelius before, installation and setup is easy if you follow the handbook. Like most score-writing apps, Sibelius lets you input music one note at a time using your mouse and keyboard (or a MIDI keyboard, if you have one) or by direct transcription of your playing, if you have reasonably good keyboarding technique—though you don’t have to be a virtuoso.

The simple interface has a toolbar that keeps most commands within easy reach of your mouse, or you can use keyboard shortcuts. And the step-by-step wizard can get your score up and running in a very short time. Sibelius 5 is the first Intel version of the software, and compared to previous version, it feels like it’s been turbocharged.

One of the most useful new features is the Ideas Hub. This is a place where you can save a snippet of work—anything from a simple melody line to a whole section of a work—for later use. When you paste a saved Idea into a score, the app automatically transposes it into the right range for the chosen instrumental part. Sibelius 5 also comes with a large number of preprogrammed Ideas, useful for educators. Sibelius can be set to mark these preset Ideas clearly within a piece of work, so it’s clear which parts of a composition are original.

We should also mention the incorporation of VST and Audio Units plug-ins, together with undoable plug-ins (yes!). In fact, the playback aspects have been greatly enhanced.

The bottom line. All in all, Sibelius is software worth having for musical scoring. If you have a previous version, upgrade now

COMPANY: Sibelius

CONTACT: www.sibelius.com
PRICE: $599, $329 educational

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later, 512MB RAM, 350MB free disk space

New Ideas Hub feature. Better integration of playback facilities. Clean interface. Worksheet Creator is helpful to teachers. Universal binary

Pricey.