Importing Sibelius MIDI in Cubase

Cubase
1

Hi

I’m having a little difficulty with MIDI exports from Sibelius.

Steps are as follows:

  1. Export WAV from Sibelius.
  2. Import WAV into Cubase.
  3. Export MIDI from Sibelius
  4. Import MIDI into Cubase.

If you then play the two tracks (piano in this case), the tempo is wildly out. I’ve tried changing the project tempo manually trying to line up the tracks. I’ve also tried adding BPM to the score. The latter doesn’t work at all, the former is nigh on impossible to sync up.

Anyone able to help me out here, tell me what I’m doing wrong and give me plain English steps to do it the “correct way”?

I would be very grateful
Martin

2

For me Sibelius has often seemed to export MIDI tempos with odd .0001s or similar added after the bpm you thought you’d set, although Ultimate seems more reliable than earlier versions. I’d try exporting both audio and midi clicks of eg a woodblock crotchets and compare them with a rendered click at the same tempo using the signature track function in Cubase, to see if those all line up. If there’s a fixed discrepancy you can then manually realign at least. (If Sibelius is by any chance using a GM sound-set audio may be well-delayed, or if the latency Sibelius achieves when exporting its audio is longer than Cubase’s that may well interfere as well). However, it’s never “wildly out” so perhaps also check that you’ve stripped out any live tempo markings in Sibelius before exporting. A Windows "Ctrl-Alt-T rit. " for instance will change the tempo value but won’t tell you by how much, and an “a tempo” may not return it to the identical bpm, or may do it fractionally later/earlier than the barline you thought you’d attached the tempo text to. If I’m using anything from Sibelius as a basis for a Cubase project I input it all in Sibelius at one tempo then only make tempo mods. in Cubase itself, using musical mode for any audio manipulation. Hope that might help, and that you don’t need to get too much audio from Sibelius; the MIDI is at least much easier to correct. It’s also worth remembering that Cubase likes its metronome/tempos in bpm=? crotchets, so if eg you’ve had a dotted crotchet bpm in 12/8 or similar in Sibelius, you want to do the math & convert that to a crotchet bpm, (even though Cubase will still accept 12/8 time sig., but will want the metronome tempo in crotchets, which I find a real mind-melter!)

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