How To Make Your Accents Sound Better In 3 Easy Steps
L
Legacy Forum Post
started a topic
almost 16 years ago
I wasn't able to find this on any other thread here on the forums, but I've recently found a way to improve your accents in Sibelius 5.
As many of us already know, the default accents work well for wind parts, but when writing a percussion part we need the accents to come out a little stronger. Here are the steps you can take:
[b]1. Select all the bars of percussion throughout the piece.[/b] This can be done clicking on the first bar of the top percussion instrument on your score and then Shift+Click on the last bar of the bottom percussion instrument. This also works for doing single bars, lines, instruments, etc.
[b]2. Select only the accented notes.[/b] You [i]could[/i] go through the whole piece and individually click each and every accented note, but here's a MUCH easier way: Once all the bars are selected go to Edit-> Filter-> Advanced Filter. Here you will see a series of note articulations on the right side that you can select in order to highlight only accented, or staccato, or whatever note type you need. Then just click Select.
[b]3. Make your accents louder. [/b]Now that only your accented notes are selected bring up the properties menu and look under Playback. Check the Live Velocity box and set it to somewhere between 110-127. The default for normal notes is 80, so this usually gives good contrast. If you need to also bring your unaccented notes down, do steps 1 and 2 but instead push Deselect for all the accented notes. Then set those notes' Live Velocity to anywhere below 80. Usually between 75-90 works pretty well though.
That's it! I prefer writing the majority of the piece out to near-finished status before I do this step, but you can do it over and over as you go.
Legacy Forum Post
As many of us already know, the default accents work well for wind parts, but when writing a percussion part we need the accents to come out a little stronger. Here are the steps you can take:
[b]1. Select all the bars of percussion throughout the piece.[/b] This can be done clicking on the first bar of the top percussion instrument on your score and then Shift+Click on the last bar of the bottom percussion instrument. This also works for doing single bars, lines, instruments, etc.
[b]2. Select only the accented notes.[/b] You [i]could[/i] go through the whole piece and individually click each and every accented note, but here's a MUCH easier way: Once all the bars are selected go to Edit-> Filter-> Advanced Filter. Here you will see a series of note articulations on the right side that you can select in order to highlight only accented, or staccato, or whatever note type you need. Then just click Select.
[b]3. Make your accents louder. [/b]Now that only your accented notes are selected bring up the properties menu and look under Playback. Check the Live Velocity box and set it to somewhere between 110-127. The default for normal notes is 80, so this usually gives good contrast. If you need to also bring your unaccented notes down, do steps 1 and 2 but instead push Deselect for all the accented notes. Then set those notes' Live Velocity to anywhere below 80. Usually between 75-90 works pretty well though.
That's it! I prefer writing the majority of the piece out to near-finished status before I do this step, but you can do it over and over as you go.