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This Sibelius 6 Quick Tip is about using lyrics in Sibelius 6. There is a lot of information to cover, so I am splitting this subject up into a couple of 15-minute videos. In part I explain how to create a single syllable under every note.

When it comes to lyrics in music notation there are a couple of words that you have to know. The first one is “Syllable”: a single sound which can be one word or part of a word. For example, the word “that” is one syllable, “open” has 2 syllables, “radio” has 3 syllables.

The next word is “Hyphen”. In music notation, every syllable is being separated by a hyphen which is that little horizontal line that you also see in normal printed text, for example: “o-pen”, or “ra-di-o.”

The way you enter a syllable under a single note is by selecting the note where you want the lyric to start, then go into lyric enter mode which can be done by going to Create/Text/Lyric/Lyrics Line 1. A faster way is to use the keyboard shortcut CMD+L.

Now start typing a single syllable which can be a single syllable word or the first part of a word that has more than one syllable (see above for explanation). The next step is to use the space bar if you are going to start a new word under the next note, or the hyphen-key if you are going to type the next syllable in a word under the next note. And that’s really all that you have to do to create a lyric line that only uses one syllable under a single note.

Have a look in the video below to see everything in this blog in action.

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best regards,

André van Haren