As a full-time musical worship leader, I can tell you that Sibelius is one of the best tools I have in my toolbox. I’ll write another post on why everyone who leads music ministry at their church should check out notation software, but for now, here’s what I’m most excited about in Sibelius 6:

Magnetic Layout: automatically adjusting lyrics, dynamic markings, etc. to position them properly underneath notes. In previous versions, it put them in a default position which needed to be tweaked. This alone would save me hours in scoring.

ReWire support: glueing Sibelius to Cubase (I’m also a long-time Cubase user and fan) is brilliant.  Cubase has always had scoring features, but they’ve never been that great, honestly. To be able to record a Sibelius score into Cubase, add acoustic tracks (like guitar and vocals) and sync them up will make demo production so much easier.

Audioscore: input music with voice or other acoustic instrument. Sing your ideas into the score! Sure, it’s a Lite version bundled, and the Pro version (read: more money) probably works better, if Photoscore is any indication (and it probably is, since Neurotron makes both). But still, this also will be a huge improvement in getting ideas into notation much more quickly than going from voice to keyboard to notation.

Better playback engine: it’s always had high-quality sounds, but loading sounds from Kontakt Player has taken time and latency has been a problem. So if the native sound playback engine lives up to its billing, it’ll be so much better.

Of course, they proclaim a host of other improvements too, all of which I’m sure will be helpful.

The one question I do have which I haven’t seen answered (and really wouldn’t expect see on their marketing anyway) is if they’ve improved copy protection at all. Their copy protection scheme has always been annoying to work with, IMO. So we’ll see whether that’s changed at all.

I’m gonna have to get my hands on this upgrade as soon as I can.

Church musicians, do you have experience with Sibelius, Finale, or music notation in general? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts too – comment away! And stay tuned for another post(s) for my argument(s) on why this type of tool is essential for doing church music work well.

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

We had the pleasure of re-connecting with our good friends and colleagues, Craig and Donna Tufts, this weekend. Craig is the pastor at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Parksville, BC (just north of Nanaimo where we’re staying for now) and we joined them for worship this morning.

It was a little odd to be the only young family there, seeing as how we’re used to being surrounded by them. But the congregation was able to dote on the kids, which was fun. Ellia and Caitlin went up for the kids’ message, and then Ellia went out with Donna as she worked with the kids for their own age-appropriate time.

Their theme verse for this morning was from Psalm 100:1 – “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!” So they made and decorated tamborines. Ellia, being the big sister that she is, made an extra one for Caitlin and brought it back to her when they came back into the service. For the last song, Donna brought the 5 kids up to the front with their tamborines to accompany the songleaders.

It was a joy to see the girls up there helping to lead! Ellia began her worship leading career last summer at Redeemer’s VBS, so it’s Caitlin’s turn now to get into the act. Look out, church. There are more of us coming.

(I’ll also have to start taking my blog cues from Pastor Mark Beeson of Granger Community Church, who is an avid photographer as well and takes pics to accompany each post. This would have been a great one to have pic’d.)

What intrigues me most, though, is the way that kids are drawn to the game. It doesn’t have music that they know; the instruments aren’t really suited for kids; often-times they get booed off the stage 1/5 of the way through the song. Yet there they are, playing with all they’ve got.

So what is it? What’s the draw? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’d love to really know what the draw of Rock Band is to little hands and minds. Comment and let me know.