Frankfurt, Germany, March 13, 2002 - The Sibelius Group, developer
of market-leading music software, today launched Sibelius 2, the revolutionary
new version of the world's fastest-selling music notation software program,
for Mac OS X, Apple's powerful, UNIX-based operating system. Sibelius
2 is the first music notation program to leverage Mac OS X's advanced
capabilities.
"Sibelius is more elegant and beautiful than ever, with a new
look which compliments Mac OS X's stunning Aqua interface," said
Ben Finn, CEO of The Sibelius Group. "Sibelius 2 for Mac OS X represents
our continued commitment to meeting the requirements of music educators,
students and professional composers using Macintosh computers. Users
will be amazed at all the new features that have made Sibelius easier
to use than ever."
"Mac OS X delivers an incredibly powerful and intuitive environment
for users to listen to and create music," said Ron Okamoto, Apple's
Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations. "Sibelius 2 is
a valuable music notation application and we're delighted to have their
support for Mac OS X."
Faster and easier to create music using Arrange™
Sibelius 2 for Mac OS X integrates more than 200 new features and robust
feature enhancements, making it one of the significant upgrades of any
software ever. Among its groundbreaking new product features is Arrange™,
a function that enables the use of artificial intelligence to arrange
and orchestrate music automatically. Sibelius 2 for Mac OS X is the
first commercial program capable of such power. Arrange™ was partly
designed by Sibelius user Michael Price, whose orchestration credits
include the recent Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks HBO special, Band of Brothers.
Sibelius 2's Arrange™ feature dramatically reduces the time it
takes to produce arrangements and orchestrations for any ensemble. For
example. Arrange™ enables users to rapidly orchestrate a complete
piano piece for concert band. This feature saves hours of time for composers,
arrangers and educators, and is ideal for students learning instrumental
writing.
Faster music input and improved playback
Note input has been re-engineered and is now significantly faster.
Users can now use almost every feature of Sibelius - including copying
and pasting and moving lines and staves - without ever touching the
mouse. Playback is even more natural and realistic with enhanced Rubato™
and Rhythmic Feel™, which adds human-sounding playback to music.
Graphics and colour
With Sibelius 2 for Mac OS X, it is now easy to import colour graphics
into the music. Users can create professional looking covers or add
colour graphics to worksheets. It is easy to colour notes according
to their pitch, which is great for teaching note names to beginners
or colour according to voice to make music easier to read. Users can
also highlight areas of a score, e.g. for marking up sketches, marking
coursework and highlighting tricky passages to practice.
PhotoScore Professional 2 launched for Mac OS X
The Sibelius Group also announced today the launch of PhotoScore Professional
2 for Mac OS X; an improved version of the optical music recognition
software developed by Neuratron Software that allows users to scan printed
music into Sibelius 2.
Neuratron PhotoScore Professional 2 is the advanced version of the
PhotoScore Lite scanning program that is provided free with Sibelius
2. PhotoScore Professional 2 scans and reads music faster and with greater
accuracy than PhotoScore Lite. Once music is scanned, read and sent
to Sibelius, it becomes a fully editable Sibelius file that can be transposed,
re-arranged, played back and printed.
Notes to editors
Sibelius is the world's fastest-selling music notation software, and
Sibelius Software's technology is used by well over 100,000 people in
over 100 countries worldwide.
The Sibelius Group is based in Cambridge, England with offices in London,
San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville and Dallas.
Users such as conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, ex-Police guitarist
Andy Summers, choral composer John Rutter and film composer Michael
Kamen have helped make Sibelius the standard way to write music all
over the world.
Read more about Sibelius 2.
All information correct at time of press release.
