Sibelius Integration

This is the headline workflow: add an Accent Tap staff in Sibelius, press play, and the plugin creates, loads, and places the right instrument automatically — multiple staves of the same instrument collapse into one ensemble. It works the way VDL users expect, with no manual patch assignment per score.

One-time setup

The Hub installs the sound set for you; three steps remain inside Sibelius:

1. Restart Sibelius after installing (sound sets load only at launch).
2. Import the house style — Appearance ▸ House Style ▸ Import → AccentTap.lib (it's next to your instrument library, in the Sibelius folder). Tick only Instrument definitions. Importing into a blank score saved as manuscript paper gives every new score the instruments automatically.
3. Wire the playback device — Play ▸ Setup (Playback Devices): add Accent Tap - Pitched Percussion to Active Devices and set its Sound Set column to Accent Tap. Save the configuration.

That's it. With the sound set assigned to the device, Sibelius auto-routes any staff whose Sound ID matches an Accent Tap patch.

How auto-load works

At playback start Sibelius sends each staff's program change. The plugin:

• creates or reuses an instrument slot per instrument (not per staff),
• groups multiple staves of the same instrument into one ensemble with one member per staff/channel,
• gives auto-created members the first keyswitch and auto-spaces everyone on the stage,
• and heals itself when a score changes — reassigning channels, splitting or merging ensembles as needed.

Slots you've locked are never touched by auto-load.

Instrument presets from the score

Preset variants are separate patches in the sound set. The vibraphones and pedal glockenspiel ship with:

• Pedal — full damper-pedal behaviour via CC64.
• Note Length — note duration in the score controls ring time.

A staff pointed at the Pedal Sound ID (e.g. pitched percussion.metal.vibraphone.adams vibraphone (3.0).pedal) loads that preset automatically.

Editing the program map

The mapping between MIDI programs and instruments/presets is yours to edit — no hand-editing files:

• Settings → Sibelius shows the whole library in one list: every instrument and preset with its program number and Sound ID. Duplicate program numbers turn red as you type, and the dialog refuses to save while any remain.
• The preset menu's Sibelius Mapping… edits a single instrument's entries.

Both write the same data: the numbers are stored with each instrument's presets and mirrored into the library's ProgramMap.json, and they survive a fresh install even if the map file itself is missing. Keep the sound set's patch list in sync when you change numbers — the Prog # here is the raw MIDI program, i.e. the sound set's Program minus 1.

Notes and tips

• Sibelius normalizes Sound IDs to lowercase — custom instrument Sound IDs must match the sound set character-for-character.
• The plugin ignores CC64 by default (Sibelius emits stray pedal data); only instruments whose mappings use the pedal respond to it.
• Auto-load runs while the host is playing, so instruments appear when you first press play, not while the score is loading.