Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as the most entertaining serious critique of a software interface, and a crash course in UX mistakes.
What it is
Tantacrul dissects the UX and UI of Avid's Sibelius music notation software, going through a long list of bad design choices. The review is both a comic rant and a practical lesson in interface design.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec sjwright · 2020-06 · on “MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software”
The cheese melts in the microwave; the music melts in Sibelius. Tantacrul’s review of Sibelius’ might be the most entertaining serious critique of a software user interface ever posted to YouTube. [this video]
Strong rec wexq · 2021-05 · on “Audacity Aquired by Muse Group”
OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( [LINK] ) and youtube ( [LINK] ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, [this video] , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.
Strong rec btown · 2021-10 · on “‘Jean Sibelius’ Review: An Early Finale”
Since Sibelius and Finale are two industry-leading (and very much competing) music notation software systems, this headline made me do a quadruple-take! [LINK] [LINK] For those interested in (extremely entertaining) breakdowns of the Sibelius software and other offerings in this space from a UI/UX design perspective, I highly recommend Tantacrul's videos, which propelled him to becoming the head designer for MuseScore and Audacity. IMO, this and his Dorico video are must-watch crash-courses for any developer touching UX design, even outside of music! [this video]
Strong rec l__l · 2023-07 · on “MuseScore 4.1 is now available”
If anyone is yet to see it, Tantacrul (on youtube) is now deeply involved with MuseScore (UX lead or similar?); he put out an awesome vid on the design of MS4 at the beginning of the year: [LINK] His video on how Sibelius' UX is a pile of shit remains one of my favourite vids on yt: [this video]
Recommends rgoulter · 2019-02 · on “Whitespace killed an enterprise app”
This entertaining diatribe about Sibelius' difficult to use design mentions poor use of a Ribbon. [this video]
Recommends xmprt · 2019-09 · on “The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)”
The solution isn't to put things in preference windows either because even smart users will find that cumbersome. There's an interesting pair of videos (if you have some time) that goes over the UI of two competing music scoring software and why one is bad and the other good. [this video] [LINK]
Recommends TremendousJudge · 2022-05 · on “Clairnote: An alternative music notation system”
We are very, very far away from that. To get a feel of what scorewriter software is like nowadays, Tantacrul's videos[0] on the subject of UI are very good at showing what the state of the art is. On one of his videos he shows that the best score engraving can only be achieved by using a closed source, now-unsupported command line program from the 80s called Score[1] [0] [this video] [1] [LINK]
Recommends radicality · 2022-12 · on “MuseScore 4”
Obligatory funny video review of MuseScore 3 UI: [LINK] Same author also has a funny video on the UI of another music notation program, Sibelius: [this video]