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MusicXML Dolet Plugin for Sibelius Beta Coming Soon

This press release just appeared on the musicxml.com website and I thought it worth sharing (source: https://www.musicxml.com/dolet-8-for-sibelius-beta-coming-soon/)

Over the past few months MakeMusic has been working to update their free Dolet® for Sibelius plug-in for exporting MusicXML files from Sibelius.

Original development was centered around being able to transfer Sibelius files into MakeMusic’s SmartMusic more easily, but it was soon apparent that this would be useful more generally.

It has been over five years since the plug-in has been updated. MakeMusic wanted to take advantage of the new features of both MusicXML 4.0 and Sibelius’s ManuScript programming language to get better MusicXML files out of Sibelius. This should make it easier for people to transfer their music from Sibelius into SmartMusic, Finale, and other music notation apps.

To apply for the beta test, please fill out the application form. This will let them know what type of test coverage they will be getting in terms of both Sibelius versions and applications that will be making use of the exported MusicXML files. If accepted, you will receive information about accessing the beta versions during the week of November 29.

The Dolet 8 for Sibelius plug-in requires Sibelius 2019.5 or later. Restricting to later versions of Sibelius makes it much easier to support the plug-in and make use of the latest ManuScript features.

There will be 50 new features and fixes available in the initial beta release. Here are 10 of the highlights:

  1. Concert scores now export transposition information, including alternate clefs for transposed parts.
  2. Concert scores with octave-transposing parts such as guitar and piccolo now export correctly.
  3. Cross-staff notation is exported starting with Sibelius 2021.9.
  4. Dynamic parts can be exported all at once using the new Export Parts to MusicXML menu item.
  5. Page-aligned text is now exported except for headers and footers.
  6. Many more standard symbols are now exported.
  7. System directions export with the system attribute, providing better results when creating parts from an imported score.
  8. Text that mixes dynamics or musical symbols with words now export correctly.
  9. Metronome marks with numeric ranges now export correctly.
  10. Batch export no longer prompts for saving after each file.

Please consider joining the beta program to let MakeMusic know how it works for you in order to make the plug-in as useful and widely available as possible.

Original musicxml.com press release from November 22nd can be found here.

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Finale 26.2.2

March 3, 2020

MakeMusic today released a maintenance update; Finale 26.2.2. Select Check for Updates in your Finale menu if you have not already been notified. Here are a few of the fixes and improvements; notably in MusicXML.

Note Entry

(Windows only) Note entry input times for large scores and scores using NotePerformer now match 26.1.

Page Layout

(Mac only) Finale maintains the page layout when opening a file with the Automatic Update Layout option deselected from the Preferences – Edit dialog box.

MusicXML

Exact slur positions are now exported.
Hidden clefs now export as hidden.
Hidden Smart Shapes are no longer exported.
Hidden time signatures at the start of a part now export as senza misura.
Hyperlinks for measure-attached text blocks are now exported.
Metronome font information is now exported.
Parts with no visible clefs are now imported without clefs displaying.
Positions of text repeats at the end of multimeasure rests export more accurately.
Staff Style changes in the middle of the first measure are now exported.
Text in the JazzText, Broadway Copyist Text, and Finale Copyist Text fonts now exports more accurately, especially for codas, segnos, and metronome marks.
The Scale Expression with Attached Note setting found in the Expression Assignment dialog box is supported during export.

Related:
Scoring Notes: Finale version 26.2.2 released
Finale Blog: Finale 26.2.2 is Here!

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Is Music Preparation Part of Your Required Curriculum for College?

I recently heard from my old friend and colleague Sean McMahon.  He and I go way back; we worked together on more than a few hectic feature film score schedules back in the day.  Sean is currently on the faculty at Berkelee College of Music in Boston, and wanted to get my perspective on music preparation at the college level. I thought I would share our correspondence here.

more >> “Is Music Preparation Part of Your Required Curriculum for College?”

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MOTU announces MusicXML support in upcoming DP9 version upgrade

At Winter NAMM 2015, MOTU demonstrated MusicXML export capabilities in their demo of the upcoming version 9 release of Digital Performer. DP is MOTU’s flagship DAW application for Mac and Windows, popular with many composers for film, television and other media.

DP9 will allow users to export a sequence’s MIDI data as an industry-standard MusicXML file, for import into music notation software such as Finale or Sibelius.

MusicXML export should provide a big workflow improvement for DP-based composers and orchestrators who currently must use Standard MIDI files to exchange data with their notation software of choice. This existing method often requires creating a duplicate copy of the sequence MIDI tracks and applying hard quantization before exporting, so that the notation application will interpret the exported MIDI data in a musically useful way.

DP9’s Music XML export appears to build upon the already solid Quickscribe notation features included in DP. The exported MusicXML file will included the non-destructive quantization applied by the Quickscribe transcription engine, as well as any dynamics or other markings added in the Quickscribe editor window.

DP9 is just the latest of several major DAWs to support MusicXML. Steinberg’s Cubase and Nuendo both feature import and export of MusicXML, while Apple LogicPro X, Cakewalk SONAR and MAGIX Sequoia offer export-only support for the standard. Users of Avid Pro Tools can open and save Sibelius files, but not MusicXML.

You can view MOTU’s DP9 preview presentation at Winter NAMM in the following video (notation-related content starts around 6:35):

MOTU Product Specialist Dave Roberts, seen in the video above, says “we are projecting late Spring for the DP9 release”. Check back here after DP9 ships for a thorough review of its MusicXML feature.


Brian Monroney is a guitarist, composer and arranger based in Seattle. He has recorded  and/or toured with artists including Tom Jones, Gloria Estefan, Barry Manilow, Natalie Cole, and Nelson Rangell. Brian’s music has been heard on TV shows such as The Big Bang Theory, Ellen, TMZ and Modern Marvels.

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Working with the Logic Pro X MusicXML export feature

Overview

Logic’s Music XML feature only does export, not import, which makes sense – you’re likely not bringing music into Logic to clean up the notation. You can import .smf from Sibelius or Finale for file transfers if needed.

To access the Export feature, you need to have the Score Editor open and then go the main File Menu>Export>Score as MusicXML. This will be greyed out if a Score Editor window is not open.

Image-1-Export-to-MusicXML

The score display is what is exported – make sure you have the correct tracks and number of tracks displayed. With that in mind you could do a score set of e.g., just strings and export those.

Once exported you’ll find the file with a .xml ending. If you just click to open you’ll likely not get it opened in a notation program – you can import / open via Finale / Sibelius or select one of them to open the file.

more >> “Working with the Logic Pro X MusicXML export feature”

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Future-Proofing Finale & Sibelius Notation: Considering MusicXML

A few days ago, I was received an email from fellow music engraver Andrei Pricope on an interesting topic – how can we future proof our  existing notation work in Finale and Sibelius? I found his observations insightful, and I thought I would share some of them here. (I’ve paraphrased in some places.) He writes:

“I am a long time Sibelius user, having invested hundreds of hours of my own engraving and thousands of dollars on out-sourced engraving projects. In addition, I have made a substantial investment in both hardware and music notation software.

Recent developments with Sibelius and now Finale signal that both are now at the whim of parent entities, their corporate visions, agendas, budgets and priorities; a situation less than ideal for our community and music-making at large; hence my deep concern about the long-term blind reliance on any particular music engraving solution.

In today’s rapid-changing technology environment, and with the recent dramatic and uncertain changes for both Sibelius and Finale I’ve recently adopted a new system of file archival:

In addition to saving my files in the current version of my notation program of choice, I plan to save and archive all of my music notation files using the MusicXML file format. A number of companies currently support MusicXML, and it meets several important criteria for longevity:

  • It is currently supported by a diverse group of music programs.
  • The file format is essentially ASCII text so MusicXML is platform and OS-version agnostic.
  • It is also fairly mature at this point, which means the files can be successfully imported / translated in the future, hopefully by a variety of programs that support music notation.

In summary, moving forward, I plan to archive my files in multiple formats: (1) The original Finale or Sibelius File (2) PDF files and (3) MusicXML format.”

Thanks, Andrei!

Note that while MusicXML is currently pretty robust, some musical symbols are not universal to all notation programs, and so MusicXML conversion will fail in these cases. An example between Finale and Sibelius are tremolos. Sibelius supports tremolos with up to 5 slashes, Finale supports tremolos only up to 3 slashes. If you save a MusicXML file from Sibelius with 4 and 5 slash tremolos, these trems will not be converted. When the file is imported into Finale there will be no tremolos in these locations.

Do you have any thoughts on ways to future proof your music notation work? Please leave a comment.