Always start with something familiar

I attended a meeting of the excellent 'Norfolk Network' last night; something I really should do more often. The speaker was Ben Finn, who with his twin brother created Sibelius software. They then sold the company in 2006 for £13m. No surprise that he was a very relaxed speaker!

I'd heard a number of composers I know talk about Sibelius software and knew that it was used by some of the very best (John Rutter for example). What I had struggled with was to really understand what it did.

Ben started his presentation by describing his product as 'word processing for music'. It was at that point that the penny dropped and I realised what it was really all about. He went on to talk about the functionality of the product in terms I could readily translate into Word functionality. (Furthermore, just as you can convert voice to Word with some software, so too with Sibelius can you input with both kinds of keyboard - either the one with letters and number or the one with musical keys!)

The message I share with you from that evening is this: when describing anything new, your starting point has to be something familiar!