Share your music with Scorch using Google Drive

With the Sibelius Scorch web plug-in having been updated for modern browsers last year, the ability to share Sibelius files online is seeing renewed interest. But how can one go about it while taking advantage of cloud storage like Google Drive?

Bandleader, music preparer and teacher Kelly Fenton recently explained her typical predicament:

I teach beginner band at a public elementary school in Brooklyn, New York. I recently created a web site that hosts supplementary resources and practice guides for my students, but since it is for a public school, I had to abide by government internet safety rules and use a platform designed (with lots of security) for education.

I chose Edublogs which uses WordPress since I was already familiar with basic blogging in WordPress. One of the things I was excited to do for my students was to post Scorch web pages of exercises and the music that I often arrange for them. However, Edublogs does not directly support embedding Scorch pages, so I had to come up with a workaround.

I did not want to spend additional time or money to set up a secondary web site, so I turned to Google Drive, which I use extensively for both my school and my music preparation clients. I quickly became frustrated after exporting the Scorch and Sibelius files and dropping them into my drive. The .htm file would only show me code — no score.

Eventually, I got in touch with Ronald Hutasuhut. Ronald had successfully used Google Drive to host Scorch files. After reading over his tutorial I realized my fatal error — not having my Google folder and documents set to public! Once that was switched on, my score displayed beautifully, as you can see here.

Ronald is a composer, arranger and music preparer, and on his blog he has devoted a fair amount of time experimenting with ways to use Scorch with web sites. He kindly allowed me to reproduce his tutorial here, for which he used Chrome as his browser.

1. Export your score to Scorch

Export your score to Scorch Web Page in Sibelius and set the options. There should be two new files in the folder where you saved your score:
a)    filename.sib
b)    filename.html

(In this tutorial, the file name is “JingaLingaLing-Final”.)

2. Create a new folder on your Google Drive

Create a new folder on your Google Drive to get the URL of your uploaded files. (In this tutorial, the folder name is “RH”.)

3. Upload files to Google Drive and get your link

Upload both files: filename.sib and filename.html to the same folder (the new folder created at step 2 in this tutorial).

Check the box for filename.html and then click Details.

On the Details tab, set the Visibility to “Public on the web” or “Anyone with the link”. If you don’t want to share your files, choose “Private”.

Scroll down on the Details tab and find the file link address under HOSTING. The link is the address where Google keeps your file.

Click the link. You should be able to see your Scorch web page on your browser now. See the link address on your browser (see the picture below) and copy it. That is the link you can use to share your Scorch web page. (You can also copy the link address from the Details tab as shown on the picture above; it’s the same.)

4. Customize your HTML (for more advanced users)

If you’re comfortable with HTML code or web page editors, you can change the appearance of your Scorch web page. Before you upload filename.html, open it with an editor and modify the HTML file according to your tastes, or to fit within the style of an existing web site.

5. Experiment with HTML5 (proceed at your own risk!)

Ronald also discovered an experimental way to allow Scorch to take advantage of modern HTML5 standards with only a single line of code. However, Avid’s product designer Joe Pearson said that “we don’t recommend it, and in fact it could break Scorch in some browsers.” Joe offered the following caveats:

1. It can stop Scorch working properly in some browsers
2. It doesn’t provide a mechanism for directing users who don’t already have Scorch installed to the Scorch installers on Sibelius.com
3. It doesn’t actually provide any tangible benefit (!)
4. The standard syntax provides special instructions to Scorch (in the form of <param> tags) that Scorch uses to work out how to treat a score
5. It’s far easier to just stick with the standard syntax

So, if you like to tinker, proceed as follows with caution, and at your own risk! Find the portion of your Scorch-generated HTML file with the code that looks like this:

<object id="ScorchPlugin"
classid="clsid:A8F2B9BD-A6A0-486A-9744-18920D898429"
width="x"
height="y"
codebase="http://www.sibelius.com/download/software/win/ActiveXPlugin.cab">
<param name="src" value="file.sib">
<param name="type" value="application/x-sibelius-score">
<param name="scorch_minimum_version" value="2000">
<param name="scorch_preferred_version" value="2040">
<param name="scorch_shrink_limit" value="90">
<embed src="file.sib"
scorch_minimum_version="2000"
scorch_preferred_version="2040"
scorch_shrink_limit="90"
width="x"
height="y"
type="application/x-sibelius-score"
codebase="http://www.sibelius.com/cgi/plugin.pl"
pluginspage="http://www.sibelius.com/cgi/plugin.pl">
</embed>
</object>


Replace it with:

<embed src="file.sib" type="application/x-sibelius-score" width="x" height="y" />

In this example, replace file.sib with the name of your Sibelius file, and replace x and y with the width and height of the Scorch plug-in.

Theoretically, then, one could post a Sibelius Scorch file online with the simplest of HTML code, assuming the Sibelius file is placed in the same directory as the HTML file (and, of course, assuming the Scorch plug-in has already been installed on the viewer’s computer):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<embed src="file.sib" type="application/x-sibelius-score" width="x" height="y" />
</body>
</html>


Again, keep in mind that replacing the code in this way is not recommended or supported by Avid.

Updated January 14, 2014 with remarks from Avid’s Joe Pearson, and to state that replacing the standard code with HTML5 code is not recommended, and is at the user’s own risk.