How to Make a Study Score in Sibelius 7 Using Dynamic Parts

I love it when a feature in a program allows me to solve a problem it wasn't necessarily intended to solve. This happens a lot for me working with Sibelius 7, as its features have at this point in the program's life, become so comprehensive that nearly anything conceivable in a score can be applied after some quick familiarization with the reference manual, if not by thinking creatively about the features I already use regularly.

I'm setting up a set of new templates for myself, and this time I'm going all-out; including my EWQLSO system for playback, and taking a much closer look at the formatting of parts, to make the result as professional as possible. The end goal for me is to have a set of templates I can work in, which allow me to self-publish to a pre-determined set of page sizes, fonts, etc. - essentially setting up my own publishing 'house style'. And then something occurred to me: Study-Scores.

The idea of publishing a study-score appeals to me in situations where the piece is several movements, or otherwise exceedingly long. What doesn't appeal to me though, is the idea of re-formatting my score, or managing multiple copies of the score's file. Fortunately, there is a neat little way to publish both the main score and the study score from the same file, using the Dynamic Parts feature in Sibelius.

All you need to do is create a new dynamic part, and set it to contain all the instruments in the score. You'll probably want to set the page size to a more 'study-score-appropriate' dimension (I publish on Lulu.com, so I've gone with 6x9" ); and there are a number of other adjustments to consider, like including instruments names at the start of new sections, the position and formula for page numbers, remembering to 'hide empty staves' in the study score before publishing, etc., etc. I would recommend at this stage in the pursuit, finding existing scores that you find to be clean, easy to read, and reflective of the type of music you're writing, and try to model your main score and study score after them; and look as well at the individual parts to decide how you want your individual parts to look. I went onto IMSLP and looked up scores there, as well as looking at more recent paper-scores, depending on the intended purpose of the template.

At the end of it all, my goal (and maybe yours) is this: by thinking creatively about Sibelius' dynamic parts feature, you can build and customize three key elements (Main Score, Parts, and Study Score) all in one file, and all of them automatically updated as you compose and edit your main score. This, combined with the 'panorama' view when composing and editing, creates a single file that acts as your workspace, and publishing house, all in one convenient file.

Cheers!