Creating your own drum map

If you want to write multiple percussion instruments on the same staff using sounds, noteheads or
staff positions that aren’t defined in any of the built-in instruments, you will need to create your
own instrument with its own drum map.
For example, if you want to write:

 Choose House Style  Edit Instruments

 From the Common instruments ensemble, select the Percussion and Drums family, then
select Drum set (basic) from the Instruments in family list. (It doesn’t really matter which
instrument you choose, as we’re going to edit it in a moment anyway, but we’ll choose this one
because it has the right number of staff lines, and not too many existing noteheads in its drum
map.)

 Click New Instrument, and answer Yes when asked if you want to create a new instrument
based on this one

 Change Name in dialogs to something like Bass drum, Cymbal, Triangle, so you’ll be able to
find it again later

 Change Full name in score to something like Bass drum\n\Cymbal\n\Triangle (\n\ tells
Sibelius to put the next word on a new line)

 Click Edit Staff Type, and go to the Percussion tab in the dialog that appears

 In our example we need only three pitches on the staff to be mapped to particular sounds: we’ll
use the top line for the triangle, the middle line for the cymbals, and the bottom line for the bass
drum; select each of the other unwanted pitches and click Delete to remove themFor each of the remaining
pitches, select the notehead, then choose the correct sound from the
Sound drop-down menu.

 You might also want to change the Notehead for a particular instrument, or even specify a different
sound when a particular Articulation is used with a notehead, but this isn’t necessary

 When you’ve set the sounds, click OK to confirm the changes to the staff type

 Click OK to confirm the changes to your new instrument.

 Make sure your new Bass drum, Cymbal, Triangle instrument is in the Common instruments
ensemble: move it to the Instruments in family list from the Instruments not in
ensemble list by clicking Add to Family, then click Close to close the Edit Instruments dialog

 Now choose Create  Instruments, select your new instrument from the list, and click Add to
Score to create it, then click OK

 Input the music on the staff using the three pitches defined in the staff type; you can use voices if
you like –

Text editing
The text editing keys are similar to other programs. The main shortcuts are as follows:
3. Text
212

 To edit an existing text object, double-click it, or hit Return (on the main keyboard)
 To stop editing text, hit Esc
 To select all text in the current text object, type Ctrl+A or A
 For a new line while editing, hit Return (on the main keyboard)
 To make text bold/non-bold, click B (shortcut Ctrl+B or B) in the Text panel of the Properties
window. This (and italic/underlining) affects text you are about to type, a chunk of text you have
selected, or the whole text object (or text objects) if it’s selected

 To make text italic/non-italic, click I (shortcut Ctrl+I or I) in the Text panel of the Properties
window

 To reset a text style’s font to its default while editing it, type Ctrl+Alt+Space or ^-Space

 To make text underlined/non-underlined, click U (shortcut Ctrl+U or U) in the Text panel of
the Properties window. Underlining text is very rare in music.

 To change the font or point size of text, change the value in the Text panel of the Properties window
(although you should normally edit the text style instead)

 There are various other editing shortcuts:  5.12 Menus and shortcuts for full details.
If you just want to change the font/bold/italic/underlining/point size of a small amount of text, it’s
fine to use the options on the Text panel of the Properties window. However, if you need to make
more widespread adjustments, there are much more efficient ways:

 If you want to change all of the text in your score to use another font (e.g. to change the title,
instrument names, lyrics, technique instructions etc. to another font in a single operation),
choose House Style  Edit All Fonts, and choose a new Main Text Font

 If you want to change all the text throughout the score in just one particular text style, you
should edit the text style itself instead ( 3.9 Edit Text Styles), because this will automatically
change all existing text and also all new text you create in that style thereafter. For example,
if you decide you want your lyrics in a different font, you should edit the text style rather than
changing all the existing words manually.

 If you want to change quite a lot of text, but not all of it, e.g. to have a chorus in italics, define a
new text style based on the most similar existing one and use that text style instead (see Changing
the text style of existing text below if you have already entered the text in your score).