MusicXML: Preserving Your Music Beyond MIDI

by John Kuzmich, Jr.

"You may like your program for preserving music now, but will it still serve you in a few years? Will you have to start all over again when the application program that created your notation or sequencing files becomes obsolete or the manufacturer discontinues it?"

This is not an abstract problem. Ask people who used Music Printer Plus on DOS systems for years and are wondering what to do with their data files now. Or ask Logic users on PCs. Similarly, if all you can transfer is Standard MIDI files for notation, you might as well start over since you've lost so much information. (Standard MIDI files do not retain all performance parameters such as articulation markings, dynamics, and text.) Let's say you are using Sibelius to open up Finale files, the largest user base. There are no other programs that can open Sibelius files. In addition, if someone sends you a Sibelius 2.x or a Finale 2003 file and you have an earlier product version you won't be able to read the newer product file.

So sharing files with complete data encapsulation is not convenient or a good idea. (If you go on the Internet and post your scores with Sibelius through their Scorch application or Finale, your scores will be available to anybody on the Internet without any security.) Users of Music Printer Plus, Capella, Overture, Nightingale, Encore, and QuickScore Elite may also face a difficult situation. Each of these music programs either has its own proprietary format or the music is published as PDF images without musical semantics.

Universal Solution
Fortunately, there is now a better solution. It can preserve your original data and allows you to open and save files in other notation applications. It is MusicXML by Recordare. A universal translator for common Western musical notation, it supports analysis, information retrieval, and performance applications. It can also augment, but does not replace, specialized proprietary formats of the original software application. And it is complete enough for a wide variety of music applications. This unique utility software program provides support for open, documented, text-based standard file formats. You may not be able to save every detail of your score for use in a different program, but you are a lot better off than with Standard MIDI files.

MusicXML is available under a royalty-free license modeled on W3C. It is supported by Finale, Sibelius, SharpEye Music Reader, and Dolet. It has had faster adoption than anything since MIDI for music notation programs. Presently, it imports and/or exports data files between Finale or SharpEye (a great music scanning program that rivals PhotoScore by Neuraton and SmartScore by Musitek) and Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF) applications such as Encore, Lime, MIDISCAN, and Igor Engraver (an outstanding web posting notation software from Sweden), as well as MIDI files and others. Best of all, MusicXML offers tutorial, documentation, musical examples, and subsets that make it easy to get started.

Enhanced Power-User Music Technology Applications Via MusicXML
There are two classifications of computer music software applications, power-users and user-friendly applications. Power-user applications are performance-oriented and frequently deal with music sequencers, notation, automatic accompaniment generators, and music scanning software applications. User-friendly applications are mainly concerned with drill, practice, and tutorial applications that do not deal with projects such as ear-training, music theory, and general music fundamentals.

The advantages of power-user applications is that these programs can create projects that represent music compositions and practice accompaniments. One advantage of using a power-user application is that the "whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Namely, compositions can be constructed and improved far beyond their original software application. For example, a composition can be initiated in a sequencing application and then exported as a Standard MIDI file into an automatic generating software application such as Band-In-A-Box, where rhythm section parts can easily and creatively be added to the original composition and then exported to a notation program such as Finale and/or Sibelius where the composition can be finalized with sophisticated manuscript enhancement for a printout. The same composition could then be exported back to a sequencing program for a recording to be burned on a CD. The problem with this example is that Standard MIDI files don't always retain all of the nuances from each power-user application. But now with MusicXML more parameters can be retained and users can interact between Sibelius and Finale compositions without any hesitation.

Closing Comments
MusicXML is enabling "new" power tools. Microsoft has announced that the next version of its Office will read and write XML files. Finale 2003 for Windows has been doing this for months so you can read its Finale 2003 data files in Finale 2000, 2001, and 2002. Sibelius 1.x users can now open Sibelius 2x files. Without MusicXML, it was impossible to do this except in a Standard MIDI file format.

The 20-year-old Standard MIDI file format has served the market well, but the capabilities of MusicXML will make the interchange and sharing of data files more accurate and more comprehensive.

Product web sites mentioned in this article
MusicXML/Recordare
Sibelius
Finale
SharpEye
SmartScore/Musitek
Lime
Igor Engraver
Band-In-A-Box

Publishers and manufacturers who have innovative products with jazz education applications for possible review in the Watch Out! column are encouraged to contact me at 13888 W. 3rd Place, Golden, CO 80401 USA or my home page on the World Wide Web.