If you're thinking "Are those lines and squiggles and arrows and boxes on a musical notation stave?!", you're absolutely right. If you think this is bad, you should have seen the original that I put down on paper. It was about as messy as messy gets - erased markings and the slightest hints of pencil all over the place. Which is why Darren Sim forced me to go do this up in Sibelius, I suppose.
Four hours with the monster that is Sibelius trying to get that stupid piece of music down on software has finally made me realise exactly how Eric Whitacre feels about Sibelius - he blogged about it and you can read it here. Now it's all very well when you've already got music down on paper like I did, and all you're doing with Sibelius is simply to make it look neater.
But what happens when you're actually writing music for the first time? When you've got a melody that just doesn't come out fast enough on the computer? Then, I have to say, I'm very sorry Sibelius but that's when I'd be ditching you for good ol' pen and paper. Sometimes when music is easy to write - normal, standard simple meters and rhythm and nothing too fancy - Sibelius is about as easy as easy gets. But when you have squiggles and lines like so many composers of modern music do, Sibelius doesn't quite cut it to get your ideas down fast enough.
You've got to go through clicking on this tab, that tab, opening this box, configuring that property - and by the time you've done all that, you'd probably be like "Okay, so what was it I wanted to write again?" And that's about the worst thing that could possibly ever happen while writing music. Which is why I don't really like Sibelius when writing for fancy, modern notation stuff. Just doesn't work.
Alright, granted that once you've got it done once it becomes a lot easier the next time. It's practice makes perfect, really. But that doesn't quite overcome some of the cumbersome problems with Sibelius and modern notation.
Oh well. But I suppose every composer has his or her own personal style and preference. I suppose I won't be ditching my Sibelius any time soon, of course. I still love it for the wonderful music notation and it's brilliantly easy to use if you're writing really simple things. But once you get to doing different sorts of work, you're not going to exactly be writing simple things like 'do-re-mi' and presenting that as an A level standard composition, at least.
I suppose there can only be one real answer for composing with modern notation. Especially when a nice harmony or progression comes into your head - but flies out as soon as it flies in. And this happens to a lot of composers, I know, and it's such a common problem. Something good and musically brilliant may just as easily go as it comes.
Give me a pencil and paper, any day.