Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius

Obligatory posting of Tantacrul's hilariously vicious kicking of Sibelius[0] "This really is one of the great examples of breaking all UI design principles and every UX design principle too. It's like a design bull in a musical china shop." ▶ this video [0] They may have fixed things in the intervening 8 years, I'm not a composer, I don't know.

Relevant Tantacrul video on the erosion of the Sibelius UI: ▶ this video I used Sibelius extensively circa version 5, and refused to upgrade for many years. I used it to get through my music minor in college. I still have the installer and a k*ygen on a hard drive somewhere since they stopped selling licenses to it and I lost mine. Still my preferred software, and yes I've tried Musescore. It's not nearly the same. Old software still works.

That's very much it. You could also make an analogy to the arts of typography and typesetting. It's of the same importance to a composer or musician that the notation is legible and beautiful, as it is to a graphic designer or reader that type and layout are legible and beautiful. If the GP is interested in the topic, there are great videos by Tantacrul on his experience redesigning the notation font for MuseScore [0] and his overview of MuseScore 4.0's engraving improvements [1] - in particular this second video, concerning mainly layout, shows just how far this CSS approach would have to go to have a truly legible, reflowable layout in the face of beams/slurs/ties. (I don't want to take away from anyone on the Sibelius team, they're likely even better experts on the subject than Tantacrul is, but as far as I know, they didn't make long-form Youtube videos about the topic! He also likely got the job of leading the MuseScore redesign thanks to his previous videos that critiqued and reimagined the interfaces of music composition software... including older versions of Sibelius [2] and MuseScore [3]) [0] link [1] link [2] ▶ this video [3] link

I was wondering why the name Avid was familiar but also had a negative connotation in my head, then I remembered it was from a YouTube video [1] about how horrible its interface is. 1. ▶ this video

If anyone is yet to see it, Tantacrul (on youtube) is now deeply involved with MuseScore (UX lead or similar?); he put out an awesome vid on the design of MS4 at the beginning of the year: link His video on how Sibelius' UX is a pile of shit remains one of my favourite vids on yt: ▶ this video

Obligatory funny video review of MuseScore 3 UI: link Same author also has a funny video on the UI of another music notation program, Sibelius: ▶ this video

We are very, very far away from that. To get a feel of what scorewriter software is like nowadays, Tantacrul's videos[0] on the subject of UI are very good at showing what the state of the art is. On one of his videos he shows that the best score engraving can only be achieved by using a closed source, now-unsupported command line program from the 80s called Score[1] [0] ▶ this video [1] link

> doing things like automating certain workflows where possible, building some custom tools, etc. The goal is to slowly transition to working as a programmer at Steinberg or Ableton or something like that, and then start my own company. I presume you’ve contacted tantacrul[1] who is now working[2] redesigning Audacity, with a hilarious video on the hellscape of a UI that is Sibelius[3]. I am guessing becoming a UI designer for a major piece of software is less difficult than becoming a composer? [1] link [2] link [3] ▶ this video Thank you for your story - it is a good reminder of the risks we face.

Since Sibelius and Finale are two industry-leading (and very much competing) music notation software systems, this headline made me do a quadruple-take! link link For those interested in (extremely entertaining) breakdowns of the Sibelius software and other offerings in this space from a UI/UX design perspective, I highly recommend Tantacrul's videos, which propelled him to becoming the head designer for MuseScore and Audacity. IMO, this and his Dorico video are must-watch crash-courses for any developer touching UX design, even outside of music! ▶ this video

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( link ) and youtube ( link ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, ▶ this video , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

My favourite example of this is Sibelius. The 'Quit Sibelius' button is precisely where you'd expect to find the 'Next' button. This video shows it at 6:33 ▶ this video

For those out of the loop: Tantacrul is a composer who put together some hilariously scathing UI/UX video reviews for some popular composing software tools out there, including MuseScore [1] [2] [3]. The team developing MuseScore then brought him on as head of design. [1] Sibelius: ▶ this video [2] MuseScore: link [3] Dorico: link

The cheese melts in the microwave; the music melts in Sibelius. Tantacrul’s review of Sibelius’ might be the most entertaining serious critique of a software user interface ever posted to YouTube. ▶ this video

> That's plausible but AVID Pro Tools is even more prestigious than Logic and AVID's market cap is only $250 million[0]. In no universe is Pro Tools more prestigious than any of its competition. I think Pro Tools is viewed as The Thing That All Studio PHB Managers Purchased At Some Point So It's Reasonable For Studio Techs to Be Trained For. Kind of the "nobody ever got fired for picking IBM" of the music industry. In my opinion, AVID does not have a reputation for making innovative products. See what happened when they acquired Sibelius ( ▶ this video ). My limited experience with the industry suggests that Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic are the Cool Tools for Producing Music, that Cubase (Steinberg) is particularly popular with composers, that FL Studio is the cool low-cost leader among students, and that Reason is The Outsider. Notice which software is not in this list.

The solution isn't to put things in preference windows either because even smart users will find that cumbersome. There's an interesting pair of videos (if you have some time) that goes over the UI of two competing music scoring software and why one is bad and the other good. ▶ this video link

This entertaining diatribe about Sibelius' difficult to use design mentions poor use of a Ribbon. ▶ this video