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1e: Exporting and importing the house style

Now we have the score layout the way the publisher wants it, we can export it as a house style. The house style file includes the text style settings and their positions in the score. Importing this house style in another engraved score will redesign and reposition all the text.

Open Sibelius score 1.3, and from the House Style menu, choose Export House Style…

…which will open the Export House Style window where you can give your House Style a name. I always start the name with the publisher followed by the instruments in the score:

Hit OK and close the score.

Now let’s import the House Style in the score that is already engraved but doesn’t have the correct text styles set yet. Open the Sibelius file “After work, late at night” which can be downloaded here…

https://app.box.com/s/t10shewzsb1s2z1d8oe9

…and from the House Style menu, choose Import House Style:

This will open the Import House Style window:

In the left text panel, select the house style that you exported earlier, leave the Import Options as they are. and hit OK.

All the text should now have the correct settings, however it’s always a good idea to double-check if the text styles that were used in the score had indeed the correct styles assigned. This can be done in the Properties window which can be found in the Window menu:

The text tab in the Properties window shows the text style that was assigned to the text objects in the score, for example if you would select the title in the score, you would see this:

Check all the other text objects and re-assign the text style if needed, which can be done by choosing it from the drop down menu, so the House Style setting will be applied correctly.

Another issue that sometimes happens is that Sibelius does not reset the design and position correctly after having imported a House Style. I like to be sure the House Style is assigned correctly, so at this point I select all the text objects one by one, keeping the CMD-key down and select from the Layout menu: Reset Position and Reset Design.

Manual text entre versus Score info/wildcards
As mentioned earlier, instead of using the Score info window and wildcards method, you can also type the text directly in the score. The way this is done is by choosing the desired text style from the menu Create/Text/, clicking in the score and start typing. This is for sure faster than the method I described. However the score info/wildcards method will ensure you that all the text is formatted correctly and is therefore my favourite way of working, especially when starting a new engraving in an earlier prepared template.

It’s possible that your publisher will send you engraved scores in which the engraver typed the text directly into the score and therefore some text could be missing or is not formatted correctly. It’s your job to double-check these things.

In our example, the “After work, late at night” score, the Header after 1st page appears to be formatted wrongly. It is formatted as Title – Composer, while it should be Composer – title – instrumentation:

We can correct this by double clicking in the header text and adding the missing text:

For the final result, see Sibelius score “After work, Late at night”-b which can be found here:  https://app.box.com/s/ckds0s6zj8jrfb4qy7te

In the next step, we will have a look at Cue notes.

Have a great day!

André van Haren

http://www.andrevanharen.com/