So finally tried making a classical piano song. . .

[Homeless Nutter]

Getting natural piano sound while using MIDI is quite tricky - any "real" instrument, really. It's almost impossible when using notation, which is designed to be interpreted and "humanized" by the performer. I imagine there might be plugins, which add some variation in velocity and timing, but I don't know for sure, especially that I have virtually no knowledge of Sibelius. I do know, however, that most modern sequencers have some options for adding human feel to programmed parts, as do some virtual instruments.

Yeah the actual performance is actually a WIP.  I'm pretty good at hand-editing notes to sound natural.  But this song has a LOT of notes!  I think it would take me about as much time to learn to play the piece, as to program it to sound played.  That doesn't mean it would be worth trying-- but yeah. . . it could very easily take more time to sequence it as it took me to write it.

Yes, sorry - I didn't mean to lecture you on the basics of MIDI editing. I was bored and in the mood for reminiscing about the times when I could be bothered to do sh*t.

I've done it in the past with violin, and it was MUCH easier just because of the reduced volume of notes you have to deal with.

Interesting. I always found solo fret-less string instruments to be some of the most difficult ones to emulate - perhaps second to only slide/blues acoustic guitars, sitar and maybe jazz saxes - due to their wide range of articulation and modulation techniques available. Glissandos, legato and vibrato are especially tough and sound notoriously fake and cheesy on pretty much all MIDI instruments I've ever heard. Then again - perhaps there are some so convincing, I heard them without even knowing they were their "fake"?

Anyway, for what little experience I have imitating acoustic instruments with MIDI - I'd rather go through black pages of piano notes, than try to pull off a convincing violin sound. Especially solo, when I can't just drawn out the questionable bits with noise...

Luckily for me, I live in Korea right now, and a local piano school director has found a top-notch student who wants to try and play it.  Hopefully in a couple months, I'll have a live concert performance to link, and then I can die happy!

Well - sounds like you're all set, then. Good luck and have fun... errr... dying happy, I suppose.