Musical notation may just be the most sophisticated form of written communication the human race has developed. And while western-style musical engraving has been in development for millennia, digital notation software -- like the new Sibelius 6 -- has had mere decades to play catch up. Developing scoring software is so challenging because the perfect program would need to be as syntactically thorough as any word processor and as object-aware as any graphical layout publisher, all while being able to handle the vast scoring lexicon and still staying out of the composer or transcriptionist's way. Sibelius has always been at the forefront of digital score publication, and with the advent of Sibelius 6, scoring software gets a whole lot closer to the cross-discipline ideal of what score publishing software should be.

The whole raison d'etre for computerized score publishing -- and for computers in general, for that matter -- is to make completing complicated tasks easier and faster. To that end, Sibelius 6 introduces some huge improvements that, frankly, I'm surprised have taken this long to realize. Magnetic Layout finally gives Sibelius the automatic layout adjustments that's the functional centerpiece of other publishing software. Now, instead of just piling dynamics, lyrics, and other notation on top of one another, Sibelius actually moves items out of the way, or re-formats related symbols in a way that makes notational sense. For example, see the picture on the right. The crescendo is automatically trimmed and aligned to make logical layout sense with its related dynamics notation. The magnetic layout behavior can be adjusted to taste, witched on and off for specific elements, and is applied to every element of the score. All this happens in real time, automatically, saving untold hours of cleanup.

With layouts becoming mostly automatic, Sibelius makes room for more advanced engraving features, most notably in the impressive Slur Drawing functionality. Complex, multi-directional slurs can be drawn and adjusted with way-points, much the same vector-based graphics programs draw curves. As you can tell form the picture on the left, Sibelius 6 slurs like Don Rickles on Sunday morning.

The second major addition is support for word processor-style Track Changes and Compare Versions functions, which makes it much easier to keep tabs on the evolution of complex scores, and facilitates partner-scoring (because scoring just isn't as fun by yourself). Contributors to a transcription can leave color-coded notes on shared documents, throwing the door wide open for document-notes-based composer cattiness and scorer-scandals ("hey, Johannes, is that ritard. poco à poco supposed to be a dig because I DO NOT find it funny" ; "dammit, Geörg, not every notation is about you OK?!?!?").

These editing and workflow improvements only begin to scratch the surface of the new functionality in Sibelius 6. Major playback features make it easier to hear what a fully realized composition will sound like, with more resemblance to the actual performance than ever before. New, high-quality sampled instruments are standard, and clever Live Tempo feature lets you dynamically "conduct" and record tempo changes by tapping on your space bar, MIDI keyboard, or a footswitch. Sibelius 6 also now boasts ReWire Support for syncing with most major DAWs.

A new Chord Symbol entry system makes it easy to simple type in common chord names and drop them into your composition. For example, type "Cmaj7" and Sibelius 6 not only recognizes the cord, but will give you a number of different options for how to display the chord name, including enharmonic voicing nomenclature. An extensive library of Guitar Chord symbols has been added as well, and new Keyboard and Fretboard Windows display common fingerings for those chords.

The Keyboard and Fretboard Windows make excellent learning tools, and are just a few of the new educational offerings that Sibelius 6 brings to the music classroom. Classroom Control effectively turns one computer in a Sibelius 6 local network into the "instructor" console, from where teachers can send out assignments, remotely access students' projects in real time, and even collect work at the end of a period. There's even a Creative Diaries feature, where students can journal the progress on their projects. . . which may seem a bit quaint at first blush, but Sibelius assures teachers that this feature will make it easier for them to "spot any plagiarism." Woulda made it harder for Jean Sibelius to steal from Wagner back in the day, AM I RIGHT? Just kidding.

There's so much more to Sibelius 6 -- support for an online, commercial score publishing service, audio recording (!) -- you really owe it to yourself to download the Sibelius 6 demo and spend a little time getting to know it. The full version of Sibelius 6 Professional costs $599.00 US, with the educational version going for $329.00. Reduced is pricing available for up- and cross-grades, and now that Sibelius is part of Avid, is available in packages with M-Audio MIDI controllers.