Final touches on a Sibelius score

Any recommendations in terms of house styles to try out, features I might not be aware of?

What's your process for polishing?

Could you be more specific?

This is way too vague to give answers to.

Things like the size of noteheads, engraving rules, staff size, fonts for expression and technique text, etc. Just to make sure it looks as polished as possible.

It's also just a question of personal preferences, anything you might do when finalizing a score for printing, etc.

Stuff I would do?

Make it look good. There's really no specifics because music is so varied and there are so many situations that could apply.

Thus, can we get more specifics please?

Read through it many many times, score and parts, and MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS LEGIBLE. That is, that there's nowhere text crashes into notes and slurs hit articulations. Make sure there's enough space between staves. And then make sure this spacing is pretty much consistent on every page (this is where you'd go into "engraving rules"). Be consistent in fonts (i.e., tempo text is always in x font, expressions are always in y font--this shouldn't be a problem unless you modified something, in which case you should make sure everything matches), in score conventions (say, if you're writing a piece with divisi; do you always write multiple voices as chords, or as two separate stem directions? This ought to be consistent throughout the score.) Tempo text should be in line with the time signature. Lyrics should be on the same horizontal plane, as should all the dynamics/hairpins on a staff. Things like that. Basically, just look at the score a bunch of times--hell, give it to friends to look at, second and third opinions are invaluable in cleaning up scores--and find whatever looks confusing/aesthetically unpleasing, and... fix it. Let us know if you've got more specific questions. (I'll suggest right now that properties window, ctrl+alt+P, that lets you make small changes to the position [x and y values] of an object you select...)

Oh, and PROOFREAD. Which is slightly different from the above, but has the same basic goal; to make your piece as playable as possible. Doublecheck anything that needs doublechecking; run any of those useful 'proofreading' plugins Sibby offers; spellcheck your accidentals/be sure you put in cautionary accidentals if you modulate.

Yeah... I was thinking about divisi. I have been splitting layers, but when the parts are rhythmically even it just seems to waste space. I can get away with only splitting layers if the rhythm differs, right?

Thanks for the advice.

Yeah... I was thinking about divisi. I have been splitting layers, but when the parts are rhythmically even it just seems to waste space. I can get away with only splitting layers if the rhythm differs, right?

Hmm... I mean, I suppose this is a personal thing. I can be a bit obsessive about these things, so I like to do an entire score one way of the other; that is, if I split layers anywhere, I do it for the whole score, even in places where the rhythm is the same. But you could get away with it, I suppose... the most important thing would be to not make it too glaring that you're going back and forth (so not having your divisi written as separate layers and then as chords in two consecutive measures). I doubt I'm the best person to answer this... good luck, in any case!

Yeah, it's just that I know for a fact that plenty of published scores I look at dont bother with multiple layers unless it is absolutely necessary, which I suppose I wish I had kept in mind, but since I had to submit it last night I didnt really have the luxury of changing all of the formatting.

I ended up sticking with multiple layers on everything but the strings.

And I wasnt aware that Sibelius had a proof reading plug in. It found 2 suspect clefs and an unnecessary arco marking that I didnt catch.

Anyway, printed out with cover, inside title page, instrumentation list, sprial bound.... all done. Weird feeling, but satisfying.