What’s on the Word Menu?
Geek-o-meter: 1️⃣ 2 3
When you’re writing music, the last thing you want to think about is technology. You want the least amount of friction from thought to paper. Automating all the steps in between will get you closer to that, and in this series, I’ll show you how I’m implementing automation in various ways to write efficiently. Starting with this first post with a geek-level of 1, which means it only takes you a couple of tweaks inside Sibelius to shape up.
One of the hidden automations inside Sibelius is often overlooked but can teach us valuable lessons on how Sibelius works efficiently.
If you've been with the application for more than a couple of years, you've probably noticed that some dynamics are more stylized than others.
If you've gotten into the habit of holding Command/Control while pressing the 'p', you've learned that this is the difference between the standard text and the music text. If you have the habit of right-clicking and using the dropdown menu, then don't—adopt a better habit (as suggested in the action items concluding this post).
But this menu highlights a key point: the shortcut to the stylized text.
Now obviously when p is command-P, you don’t need a separate shortcut for pp, you instead press that shortcut twice. This is also why m has it’s own shortcut to be used in combination with any of the other.
Unfortunately, many users have not known to hold the Command/Control button while inserting dynamics, which has resulted in scores where the dynamics don't display correctly on the page.[^1] This has led Sibelius to recently implement an automation that replaces known dynamic combinations with a stylized font. (I wasn’t able to make the example with the two different "p"s at the top of this post without using a different text style!)
I fear this has the unfortunate side effect that people don’t learn about the underlying structure of engraving nor the wonders of "word menus."
The Menus
What we are here for today is the special shortcuts menu that resides in Sibelius’ preferences as the penultimate list item. On Mac: Cmd-, (comma) gets you there. I don’t know what percentage of users have actually scrolled down and explored this place, but this was for me the first place I encountered Sibelius productivity.
As we see, the stylized p has a shortcut attached to it in the upper right-hand corner. Unsurprisingly, it’s the same we have used since the beginning of Sibelius time to write it correctly. It is categorized under ‘Expression words’ – the text that goes beneath the staff,[^2] that includes all dynamics (diminuendo, crescendo) and any expressive words like dolce, espress.[^3] and so on.
If you scroll down to ‘espress.’ you will see it doesn’t have a shortcut yet. Let’s create one! I have three important points that are my guides to what gets a shortcut in the word menu:
It’s a word I use fairly often,
it contains many characters,
it is easy to misspell in the haste of writing.
Abbreviations almost always get shortcuts since I don’t want to accidentally have left out the period at the end.
Because ‘espress.’ ticks all three boxes, I’m going to assign the shortcut Cmd-Shift-E. I select shortcuts that are within the reach of the left hand and that has a connection to the word I’m spelling. To engage the expression text, I have to press Cmd-E in the first place, so adding the shift-key is very convenient. I save 6 keystrokes with this procedure and I don’t have to proofread the text!
I try not to use more than two modifiers and only select letter keys that are on the left-hand side of the keyboard. Because of how Sibelius works, my left hand is sometimes engaged with navigation, so moving to press the P-key will take more time than necessary.
Don’t worry about using shortcuts for word menus that you use for other things inside Sibelius. The beauty of these is that they only engage when the caret is flashing in the relevant text categories. Also: no other shortcuts work when the caret is flashing – the word menus are contextual. Ever wondered why pressing Cmd-P doesn’t print the page?
Technique Text
Another big category to look through is the ‘Technique words’. These are instructions that go above the staff. I write a lot for strings, so going back and forth between ‘arco’ and ‘pizz.’ is essential. Cmd-Shift-A does ‘arco’ and Cmd-Shift-Z does ‘pizz.’ Notice that I don’t use Cmd-Shift-P. Instead, ‘Z’ is fairly representative of the technique and is just one key away from the opposite technique.
Examples of other technique words that I engage with this method are: div., unis., tutti., and ord.
Some prefer ‘divisi’. I don’t, and I never have to think about it. How about you? Do you often use a nine-letter word like ‘flautando’? Often use string labeling but terrible at remembering Roman numerals? Create a new word in the Technique words category and assign it a shortcut. Do you like to write ‘jeté’ but can never remember which way the tick goes? Look it up once and add it to your library.
The Practice
Here are a couple of suggestions that I want you to think about to get started minimizing the distance the music travels from your brain to the ‘paper’:
Keep a notepad next to you and write down all the expressive and technical words you are using during a session of writing. Restricting it to only technique text is also a good place to start to avoid overwhelm.
Take the 2 or 3 most used and create a shortcut.
Have a separate piece of paper right in front of you. On this paper write down the 2-3 shortcuts you have just created. Force yourself to use them – never right-click for the dropdown again!
Repeat this process with a fresh piece of paper for new encounters and a paper of shortcuts you are currently learning. From time to time, review these papers, cross off anything you have learned, or transfer them onto fresh papers.
The Dessert
These shortcuts follow the computer. So if you are writing on several units, it doesn’t help to set it up in your template (you are using a template, right?[^4]). Instead, the file can be found on Mac in the path Application Support > Avid > Sibelius > Word Menus. If you open this in TextEdit, you will probably recognize some of the mumbo jumbo. You can copy this file to another system, but I would be careful with merging. Instead, create the word menus on one system and move it to another. What I do is still the caveman method: Once or twice a year I have my desktop and laptop open at the same time and just go through it manually. It’s really not that big of a deal.
Now go ahead and prepare that menu!
Footnotes
1: Behind Bars pg.101: A stylized bold italic gives symbols p, f, m, s and z an individual and weighty appearance. No other text with the music should be as conspicuous… Other wording for dynamics such as cresc., dim., sempre, is the same size and should use lower-case italic put never a bold typeface.
2: In this post, I will discuss placement according to non-vocal, non-grand staff engraving. Google Translate doesn’t yet have this feature, but feel free to interpret it as ‘above the staff’ and ‘between the staves’ in your mind.
3: Some house styles make the distinction between espr. (espressivo) and espress. (espressamente). With these word menus, you can differentiate and always select your preferred way by assigning corresponding shortcuts.
4: You should.