🎷 Atomic Big Band Comes to Sibelius

Hey, Trey here. If you’ve been following along, you might have seen that we released a set of custom expression maps for Dorico a while back to bring Atomic Big Band! The Horns to life in a proper notation workflow. That was a big milestone for us.

But even as we were working on Dorico, there was something else on my mind — something a little closer to home.

I’ve been a Sibelius user for a looooong time. I switched from Finale over to Sibelius in my last years of college. And every chart, lead sheet, orchestration, composition I've written since then has been input into Sibelius. I have no idea how many pieces of music have been exported from my various versions of Sibelius. Over a thousand, I'm sure. I know the quirks, the shortcuts, the way the thing feels under your fingers when you’re writing. And even though Dorico’s modern and powerful, Sibelius is — for a lot of us — still home.

So while the Dorico release was exciting, I’ll be honest: I was just as anxious as anyone to get Atomic Big Band working properly inside Sibelius. The way you want it to work when you’re just trying to write music, not program it.

It’s Here.

We built a custom sound set, playback device and template for Sibelius that ties directly into Kontakt. Now, when you notate a fall, a shake, a scoop, a harmon mute, anything, you hear it — no keyswitch memorizing, no channel hopping, no manual CC entries. Just write it like you always have and let the sound set handle the rest.

Dynamics work. Articulations work. The playback sounds the way the page looks — which, if you’ve been using Sibelius a long time, you know hasn’t always been the case for jazz.

What This Means for You

If you’re already using Atomic Big Band in a DAW, you know the sound. Now imagine hearing that same phrasing, those same dynamics, that same nuance — without leaving your score. 

🎶 Sibelius + Atomic Big Band — Finally.

It took a lot of hours, a lot of testing, and a lot of patience (thank you, Sibelius quirks), but it’s here.If you're a long-time Sibelius user like me, you're going to understand the feeling of seeing your big band score actually play back the way you hear it in your head.

For all my fellow Sibelius lifers? This one’s for us.