Scoring Express is a collection of high-quality, professional templates for Sibelius Ultimate — based on the same templates used at NYC Music Services, an industry-leading music preparer.
Each Scoring Express package is much more than just the templates. It contains manuscript papers, house styles, high-quality music and text fonts, and plug-ins — all installed in one go, so you can get started right away.
The settings in Scoring Express files are the result of decades of experience preparing music notation at the highest level. Embedded throughout each file are carefully considered parameters that refine positioning, placement, and design. They reflect the expert advice and tips you’ll find on the Scoring Notes blog.
Drawing on our knowledge of the ins and outs of Sibelius, we have made use of some of the more obscure features and settings and baked them right into the Scoring Express defaults so that you don’t have to spend time fiddling with them. Each file also includes loads of additional symbols, lines, and text styles that extend Sibelius’s default capabilities in many ways.
Plus, Scoring Express takes full advantage of the Norfolk and Pori fonts that not only bring a unique beauty to your music, but deliver unique features as well, like the angled slash chord (ASC) symbols.
What’s the difference between downloading the Norfolk or Pori fonts and purchasing Scoring Express?
Feature | Norfolk / Pori fonts only | Scoring Express |
---|---|---|
Fonts | Norfolk and Pori are separate items | All Norfolk, Pori, and other high quality music and text fonts included with every purchase; more than 40 in all |
Installation | Manual | Automatic installer. No separate font download or installation necessary |
Templates | No | At least 9 different templates included |
House Styles | 1 basic per font | Yes: One per template, plus a parts house style |
Manuscript Papers | No | Yes: One per template |
Plug-ins | No | Yes |
Custom features | Limited | Many extra symbols, lines, hierarchical text styles, engraving rules, positioning settings and note spacing rule |
Example files | No | Yes |
Support | No | Yes |
Price | $20.00 (suggested contribution) | $69.99 - $79.99 |
All Scoring Express for Sibelius installations come with these fonts: the Norfolk and Pori fonts, plus the Figurato figured bass font, and the Academico, Archivo & Archivo Narrow, Arimo, Gothic A1, P052, Petaluma Script, and Tinos text fonts. Several useful plug-ins are also included to help you quickly get results.
Scoring Express for Sibelius — Jazz includes 11 professional Sibelius templates for stand-alone use, plus corresponding Manuscript Papers and House Styles for each, in addition to two Parts House Styles that can be easily imported into any part.
Cam Millar (verified owner) –
I’ve been a longtime Sibelius user (since ver. 2) but I’ve also gained working knowledge of every other notation program over the years, including the most recent offerings, all in the search of finding the most painless, easy method of creating scores and parts for my projects. As a professional musician/instrumentalist myself, I have certain standards of what I want to see when music is put on my stand, and I sure don’t want to have poor notation and poor parts copying for any of my own composing/arranging projects. So, as many others, I’ve gone down many ‘roads to Rome’ playing the notation software game in the quest for musical satisfaction.
So, along with all the other fantastic recent upgrades that have been made to Sibelius Ultimate over the last few years, it’s really amazing that now we can all utilize and benefit from all the painstaking hard work and shared knowledge gained from so many years of Sibelius music engraving at the highest professional levels from Philip Rothman and his team.
They’re sharing the ‘keys to the castle’! These templates (not only for Jazz) must be one of the deals of the century.
How many hours, days, weeks, have the rest of us spent trying to figure out how to input some notational needs instead of spending all that time actually creating music? I’m sure I speak for many musicians/composers!
Well, I can only rave over the layouts, text and music font decisions, and ease of Parts creation that come as part of the Jazz templates. I just finished a project where I was composing original music for a series of concerts coming up this summer, and rehearsals have come up very fast (as in tonight!)
Normally I would have been so frustrated with the formatting or parts creation somewhere in the process that I would evevitably get into my ‘there must be better software for this’ mode of thinking.
Instead, I had the greatest stress-free experience ever. Sibelius is usually pretty stress-free, but these templates put the ‘icing on the cake’ for me. Easy to use with beautiful results! I couldn’t ask for more.
The only change I made myself was to use the Pori fonts for my Chord Styles, as I like their appearance. Other than that, everything was just ‘go ahead and use the new styles’.
Many thanks to NYC Music Services for their amazing offering to the music community at large. I still find it mind-boggling that the ‘rest of us’ are able to have access to these templates!
OK… I have to get back at some work with Sibelius and my Jazz templates on this project….. I hope other people are able to gain as much satisfaction and peace-of-mind from these products as I have been able to!
BJC3991 (verified owner) –
These templates are absolutely phenomenal.
The installer makes getting them up and running a breeze, and they are very easy to learn how to use.
I am a new user of Sibelius and am currently in the process of transferring my big band arrangements from Finale into Sibelius via XML files.
These Scoring Express templates have taken what I thought would be an arduous and time consuming process and turned it into an astoundingly efficient and tremendously enjoyable endeavor.
The angled slash chord functionality alone makes it worth the purchase price, but these templates do so much more than just change the appearance of chord symbols.
It is endlessly delightful to import an XML file into these templates and, with a few clicks, watch them transform from poorly formatted charts with numerous clashes and note spacing issues into beautifully engraved files which would pass the eye test of even the most discerning musicians, conductors, and librarians.
The best part of this package, however, may very well be the ability to use these templates to format not only a score, but individual instrument parts as well (which, as anybody who has ever had to produce parts for a large ensemble work on a tight deadline can tell you, is an extremely stressful undertaking using the default templates provided by Sibelius or Finale).
This product will undoubtedly save you many, many hours of laborious work, all the while ensuring when you pass out your charts to a big band that you can be confident your music will look as pleasing to the eye as possible.
I had no idea that my scores and parts could look this fantastic, but now that I do, I can’t imagine ever using anything other than these templates for any of my arrangements or compositions.
Further, the companion set of templates for chamber music are equally fantastic, and I will soon be using them to edit my compositions for orchestra and pierrot ensemble.
I cannot recommend the Scoring Express templates highly enough.