Color Harp Strings

Version 01.05.00
Added 27 Apr 2009 (last updated 26 Apr 2016)

For use with Sibelius 5, Sibelius 6, Sibelius 7.1, Sibelius 7.5, Sibelius 8.x, Sibelius 18.x, Sibelius 19.x, Sibelius 20.x, Sibelius 21.x, Sibelius 22.x, Sibelius 23.x and Sibelius 24.x

This zip file contains 2 plugins: Color Harp Strings and Pitch Spectrum for Harp. These plugins are different approaches to coloring notes that are on a harp\\\\\\\'s C strings (pitches Cb, C, and C#) Red, and those on the F strings (Fb, F, and F#) Blue. This is sometimes done for introductory harp music, though some harpists like it for all their scores.

This would be fairly simple to do except for the fact that Sibelius colors all notes in a chord the same color.

These plugins offer solutions that will work in some cases, and offer at least a starting point when they cannot do all the coloring.

*Color Harp Strings* will color notes that are not in chords or intervals. It will color (using the mechanism of Edit > Color) single notes of the desired pitches, but will not color the same pitches in a chord. Instead, it traces the location of such pitches so you can find them to hand color after printing.

If chords are broken up so that each chord tone is in a different voice (quite tedious), all the notes can be colored with this plugin. This plugin has no problem differentiating enharmonically equivalent pitches (C#/Db, Cb/B, etc).

*Pitch Spectrum for Harp* uses the Sibelius Pitch Spectrum feature, which can color chord tones separately, but will not differentiate among enharmonically equivalent pitches (C#/Db, Cb/B, C/B#, F#/Gb. etc.). These would be colored the same, which can be a problem in harp music, which often contains enharmonic pitches. The plugin looks to see if there are conflicts. If so, it offers a choice of coloring each pair of the equivalent notes or not.

This plugin can completely color music with chords if there are no enharmonic notes.

Be sure you understand how Pitch Spectrum works (check the Reference and the plugin Help) before using this plugin, or you may be surprised.

Pitch Spectrum for Harp will not work in Sibelius 6, which removed the Pitch Spectrum feature. It will still work in Sibelius 5. Color Harp Strings does work (with the same limitations) in Sibelius 5 and 6.

Updated 20 February 2015. The plugin will now also color chords that consist only of notes on the C string or on the F string.

Updated 26 April 2016 to allow coloring of individual note objects

Plug-in written by Bob Zawalich.

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