Sibelius on the road – the mobile musician
Mapping a USB number pad to full-sized QWERTY keyboard to allow access to all shortcuts, using Karabiner, a powerful piece of mapping software for Mac.
Background:
The world of the mobile composer has long been a reality, with laptops now powerful enough to run sequencers and notation software efficiently and seamlessly. However, many of these programs require the use of full size QWERTY keyboards for professionals to make use of all the shortcuts and features allowing for speed of use, something that is particularly important if you are up against it at a recording session for example. Sibelius, is generally regarded as the go-to notation package for professionals, and is the base piece of software for this article.
Sibelius, as many of you will know, uses the number pad on the full size keyboard for selecting note lengths and articulations amongst many others. However, the mobile setup, generally doesn’t included a full size keyboard owing to its cumbersome nature. For a while now the use of a USB number pad has proved a useful addition to the setup as this allows for note durations to be selected quickly when using step input (the authors preferred accurate and efficient method). However, articulations are not easily selectable as when trying to select tenuto (using the USB number pad), usually ends up deleting notes, as the number in use here uses that button as the Delete key, which as you might imagine is not only frustrating, but also time wasting. Recently a piece of software discovery meant that this problem has now been solved!
Solution:
There is a piece of software for mac called, Karabiner, which as its main function allows the remapping of any keyboard key to another, including tab, enter, space, etc. There is a full manual on the program available online which covers complete usability of it, and the following section is merely as a quick guide to speed up setup with Sibelius and then possible customisation with a USB number pad.
Having installed Karabiner, open the program or go to ‘preferences’ on the karabiner icon. The 1st tab “Change Key” has a number of options for changing the function keys and modifier keys that are most regularly required.
Navigate to the “Misc & Uninstall” tab, and under “Custom Setting:” click “Open private.xml”. A Finder window should open showing this file. Drag the file onto “text edit”, and you should be confronted with a file which looks a bit like gibberish, well and xml file, which looks a bit like an html file.
Now in between the <root> and </root> sign type the following:
<item> <name>Change Num Pad Del to * (Sibelius NumPad Tenuto)</name> <identifier>private.swap_del_and_star</identifier> <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE, KeyCode::KEYPAD_MULTIPLY </autogen> </item>
This is the code for mapping the USB keypad delete key to the normal asterisk (*) on a full size QWERTY keyboards number pad.
Save the file, and return to the “Change Key” tab, and click “Reload XML” near the top left of the preferences window.
There should now be a new option at the top of the list called “Change Num Pad Del to * (Sibelius NumPad Tenuto)”, check the box next to this option and there you have it, the delete key should now allow you to input tenuto! – which is a lot better than it deleting your last note!
A bit more detail:
The user the manual explains how to program this XML file in further detail, but here is an abridged version to allow you to make your own key mappings.
In the XML file:
The text between <name> & </name> is the name you give your command as you wish it to appear in preferences.
The <identifier> is here to provide a unique reference point for the program. For this simply start the text you type with “private.” and then give the function a suitable name, like in the example.
The <autogen> element is where the magic happens with the 1st part of the statement “__KeyToKey__ “ telling the program what kind of mapping you would like. The 1st “KeyCode::” points to the key that you want to map, and the 2nd “KeyCode::” tells the program, which key you would like to map it to. N.B. don’t forget the comma between the two codes!
How do you know what the code for the key is? Simple! Just go to the Karabina icon on the menu bar a click “Launch EventViewer…” and press the key you wish to map, and the viewer will show you the keycode under the misc column.
Hope this gets you up and running, with a detail guide and further information available from the Karabiner website here:
https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/document.html#privatexml
Karabiner website: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/index.html.en Sibelius website: http://www.avid.com/sibelius