Developing an idea in Sibelius 6 - a series of video tutorials
There are many skills in composition to do with developing a musical idea. Some of them, like repeating the idea or changing the instrument playing the idea are easy to understand and also easy to do in Sibelius. However there are more complex concepts, such as rhythmic or intervalic diminution and augmentation, which until now were complicated to do for the first time with or without Sibelius.
In Sibelius 6 these kind of developments have been made easier to understand and experiment with with the addition of a suite of Transformations plug-ins. These pages step you through developing musical ideas with the Transformation plug-ins and other existing Sibelius features. They can be used to learn Sibelius but also to learn about these essential compositional skills.
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Introduction - Installing the shortcuts
Lesson 1 - Repeating and changing the instrument (Eroica)
Lesson 2 - Fragmentation
Lesson 3 - Modulating/transposing
Lesson 4 - Changing tonality
Lesson 5 - Sequence (chromatic and diatonic)
Lesson 6 - Rhythmic diminution and augmentation
Lesson 7 - Rotating or shuffling pitches and rhythms (Humberstone)
Lesson 8 - Inverting pitch
Lesson 9 - Augment and diminish intervals
Lesson 10 - Retrograding rhythm and/or pitch - and completing the composition
Lesson 11 - Don’t have an idea at all? Randomising pitches and the Ideas Hub. coming soon
Extension - the subtleties of Beethoven’s transformations coming soon
If you haven’t used Sibelius before, you might find it helpful to first use my Learn Sibelius in 1 Hour course, which you’ll find here.
Navigation: index of lessons << previous lesson next lesson >>
visitors to this page since I published it in September 2009
Beethoven’s original manuscript - how can Sibelius 6 help you develop a musical idea as well as the master?
The video lessons