Category: News

Today we released an updated version of our Dolet^® 6 for Sibelius plugin. This plugin exports MusicXML 3.0 files from Sibelius 5.1 and later. The MusicXML  format is the easiest and most accurate way to transfer files from Sibelius, either to Finale or any other notation program that imports MusicXML files. You can access all of our Dolet plugin downloads from:

https://www.musicxml.com/dolet-plugin/

Version 6.4 adds support for Sibelius 7.5. Earlier versions of the plugin worked with Sibelius 7.5, but the installers did not support this release. This was particularly a problem for people using Windows systems that only had Sibelius 7.5 installed.

Our Dolet plugin is as complete a MusicXML export plugin as the Sibelius plugin interface allows. Version 6.4 maintains this comprehensiveness for Sibelius 7.5 by adding the ability to export Sibelius’s gap before a measure.

The Dolet 6 for Sibelius plugin provides the only way to export MusicXML files from Sibelius 5 and Sibelius 6. Many people have also told us they prefer the Dolet plugin’s export to the built-in MusicXML export provided in Sibelius 7 or 7.5. This probably depends on the type of music you are exporting and the application that you are exporting to. If you are exporting MusicXML files from Sibelius 7, try our free Dolet plugin as well as Sibelius’s built-in export, and see which works best for you.

Today we have announced that MakeMusic is joining Peaksware. Peaksware is the umbrella company owned by LaunchEquity Partners, the investment company that took MakeMusic private last year. The common thread at Peaksware is the focus on products that, like SmartMusic, help people develop skills and self-expression through deliberate practice.

For MusicXML, nothing will be changing. I will be staying with MakeMusic and continuing to guide MusicXML development and developer support. Both MusicXML and Finale are essential to creating our SmartMusic repertoire  and fit with the Peaksware strategic vision.

MusicXML remains the standard open format for digital sheet music interchange, with support from over 180 applications. We will continue to invest in both the MusicXML format and our own MusicXML software implementations. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the MusicXML forum.

Over the past few months, many new applications have added support for the MusicXML format. There are now more than 180 applications supporting MusicXML. The range of applications is widening as well as the number.

Here’s a quick overview of what we have added to the MusicXML software page in the past few days. Some of these are new products or releases. Others may have had MusicXML support earlier, but we just discovered that recently. The software page includes more information and links.

Both reading and writing MusicXML files:

• Braille Music Markup Language (BMML) converters

Writing MusicXML files:

• LiveScore music notation editing for Ableton Live (via MaxScore and Max for Live)
• Melomics automatic composition software
• MyScript Music SDK for handwritten music recognition
• Opusmodus for script-based music composition

Reading MusicXML files:

• Antescofo score-following software
• Musicista software for computational musicology
• PhonicScore digital sheet music display and score following software
• Soundslice Player for web-based notation and guitar tablature

We have also added another site for MusicXML scores to our music page. Visaudio Designs provides designs for marching bands and percussion ensembles, including editable scores.

Do you have MusicXML software or a source of MusicXML scores that we don’t have listed on our site? Please let us know so we can add you to our lists and round out our picture of the MusicXML community. Feel free to post on the Twitter or Facebook.

Over the next few weeks we will be attending two trade shows of interest to MusicXML developers. The first is the 15th SF MusicTech conference on May 20 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. Twice a year, Brian and Shoshana Zisk do a great job gathering together a lively mix of musicians, music technologists, label and publisher representatives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and business folks. I always learn new things and get an informative update on the current state of the music technology industry.

The attendee list for this month’s meeting so far includes people from MakeMusic, Sheet Music Plus, Alfred, Avid, Flowkey, Smule, Pono, and many other music technology innovators. Each time I go I try to organize a “music notation lunch” during the lunch break. We meet at the top of the stairs in the Hotel Kabuki lobby and then head out to one of the Asian restaurants (usually either Japanese or Korean-style Chinese) in the conference’s Japantown neighborhood.

Tickets are still available for the conference, but prices increase as the event draws closer. If you’re going, it would be great to meet you, whether at the notation lunch or some other time during the show. Feel free to message us on Twitter or Facebook so we can arrange something.

The second show we’ll be attending is WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference being held June 2 – 6 at Moscone Center West in San Francisco. We’ll be there seeing what’s new for the Mac OS X and iOS platforms. With five days there should be plenty of time to get together. If you’re attending and would like to meet, please let us know so we can try to set something up.

Thank you to everybody who attended our second annual MusicXML community meeting at Musikmesse! We had at least 52 people present who signed in, 10 more than last year. You can see the full table and the people sitting against the wall in the photo taken by neoScores during the meeting.

Last year we collected wish lists for strengthening MusicXML and the MusicXML community. Replacing the MusicXML mailing list with a forum was a big request from last year’s meetings, and we launched the MusicXML forum the week before Musikmesse. This year we had more focused discussions on three topics:

• MusicXML and the Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) project
• A proposed open-source MusicXML sanitizer tool
• MusicXML potentially moving to a standards organization like MMA and AMEI in the future.

We started with a brief introduction to MusicXML for newcomers and an overview of the MusicXML community year in review. Our hosts neoScores provided a reception afterwards where people stayed for an hour after the meeting talking to MusicXML colleagues one-on-one. Once again, Musikmesse and our host company did a fantastic job behind the scenes.

The MusicXML presentation material is available at:

The 2014 MusicXML Meeting

This includes presentation material from Daniel Spreadbury of Steinberg (SMuFL), Bob Hamblok of neoScores (Sanitizer tool), and me. Daniel was unfortunately not able to join us due to travel snafus involving two canceled flights, so I presented the SMuFL material in his absence.

The attendee list and a summary of the meeting discussion is available at:

Report from the 2014 MusicXML Community Meeting

As long as Musikmesse makes this MusicBiz Lounge and Congress venue available to us, we plan to keep this as an annual event. Next year’s Musikmesse is from April 15 to 18. The Friday date seems to work well, so we’ll tentatively plan for the third annual MusicXML meeting on Friday, April 17, 2015.

We will once again have a MusicXML community meeting at Musikmesse in Frankfurt as part of the MusicBiz Lounge and Congress. The meeting will be on Friday, March 14 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm in the Harmonie Room located off of Hall 5.1.

The MusicXML community meeting will be hosted by neoScores and refreshments will be served afterwards. Please contact Jonas Coomans at neoScores if you will be attending so they can plan accordingly. They can also provide you with a free 1-day pass for Musikmesse if you need one. Jonas’s email is jonas@neoscores.com.

This year we plan to have some focused discussions on several MusicXML topics:

• Progress in the MusicXML community since last year’s meeting.
• MusicXML 4.0 and SMuFL 1.0. SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) is a project led by Daniel Spreadbury at Steinberg to standardize musical font encodings in the Unicode private area. Daniel will be present to introduce SMuFL. SMuFL addresses many of the requests we have received for MusicXML standardization over the years. We will discuss community interest in adding SMuFL support to MusicXML 4.0, and what exactly SMuFL support may mean for the MusicXML format.
• NeoScores will discuss a tool that cleans existing MusicXML files from older applications. This is a common problem for applications that want to support older notation files created with only printed music in mind.
• MusicXML and the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and Association of Musical Electronics Industry (AMEI). The MMA and Japanese counterparts AMEI maintain the MIDI standard for musical instrument interoperability. Recently MMA and AMEI have started discussing the possibility of an electronic score standard. We would like the MusicXML community’s feedback on the possibility of MMA and AMEI serving as a long-term standards body home for the MusicXML format.

This year I will also be attending the SXSW Interactive conference for the first time. I will be at SXSW in Austin, Texas from March 7 to 10, then at Musikmesse from March 12 to 15. Please contact us if you would like to arrange a meeting at either of these events. You can contact us via messages on the MusicXML Twitter or Facebook accounts. I look forward to meeting with many of you at these events!

It’s January, so that means it’s time for the annual NAMM  show in Anaheim, California. NAMM is the biggest show in the USA for the musical instrument market, including music software like MusicXML. The show runs from Thursday, January 23 through Sunday, January 26.

This will be my 15th year attending NAMM and meeting with  MusicXML developers. My meeting schedule is pretty full at this point though there are still some openings available, especially on Saturday. MakeMusic will be at Booth 6210 in Hall A.

If you want to meet but we haven’t arranged a meeting, stop by the booth. If I’m not there, somebody will be able to get your information to me to see if we can set something up. We won’t be having a separate MusicXML community meeting at NAMM this year.

On Wednesday the 22nd I will be attending The Hollywood Arrangers, an event organized by ASMAC, the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers. This will be at Catalina’s in Hollywood from 10:30 am to 2:15 pm. I’ll be there at least through lunch and hopefully for the whole event. If you’ll be there, please come by and say hello.

I look forward to seeing many of you at these two events, and learning how you would like to see the MusicXML format and MusicXML software evolve and improve in the future.

This past year has been another busy one for the MusicXML community. Here are some of the highlights:

• We had our first face-to-face MusicXML community meetings at the NAMM and Musikmesse shows. The NAMM meeting had 16 people attending and the Musikmesse meeting had over 40 people present. MakeMusic hosted the meeting at NAMM and Scorio hosted the meeting at Musikmesse. I know of at least one application that launched successfully this year thanks in part to MusicXML connections made at the Musikmesse meeting.
• One of the main suggestions from these meetings was to move the MusicXML mailing list to a forum. MakeMusic has now started work on this transition which we hope to see next year. A public MusicXML issue tracker is also a top priority from the meetings for our future development.
• MakeMusic launched its new web sites in February, including a dedicated MusicXML site and blog. This has made it much easier to keep MusicXML information up-to-date, including the list of MusicXML software applications. On that note…
• MusicXML is now supported by over 170 applications! Apple’s Logic Pro X DAW and Neuratron’s NotateMe mobile app probably got the most attention of the new additions. But there were several other programs whose MusicXML support was either added or first brought to our attention in 2013. These include Avid Scorch, Cadencii, Calligra Suite, EarMaster, Frescobaldi, Harmonia, JellyNote, Mobile Music Trainer, OveScore, and Singer’s Mate – at least a dozen in all. You can read more and find links to software that supports the MusicXML format at our MusicXML software page.
• MakeMusic updated the free Dolet MusicXML plugins to Dolet 6.4 for Finale and Dolet 6.3 for Sibelius as part of our launch of Finale 2014. The major change was support for Finale 2014’s keyless score features, along with several other updates requested by plug-in users. Finale 2014 also makes it easier to work with MusicXML files on both Windows and Mac systems.
• On the standardization side, Steinberg launched a new Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) project this year. This project is working to map musical symbols into the Private Use Area in Unicode’s Basic Multilingual Plane. This type of music font standardization addresses many long-standing notation interchange issues that have been difficult, if not impossible, to address solely from MusicXML. SMuFL has made a lot of progress since Daniel Spreadbury first shared it with us at Musikmesse, and is now up to version 0.7. We are tracking its progress closely here at MakeMusic. I see SMuFL support – both for the larger set of symbols and for the details of typography – as a promising direction for the next MusicXML update.

Thank you all for your continued support of the world’s premier open format for the exchange of digital sheet music and music notation files. It is gratifying to see both the improvements to customer workflow when a product like Logic adds MusicXML support, as well as the creative new applications like NotateMe that are enabled by the MusicXML format. Here’s to a happy 2014!

Today’s launch of Finale 2014 includes numerous improvements in MusicXML support. We have released new updates of our Dolet 6 for Finale and Dolet 6 for Sibelius MusicXML plug-ins that add support for this new release. The improvements come in four main areas:

1. Support for new Finale 2014 features
2. Usability improvements for working with MusicXML files in Finale 2014
3. Additional features and fixes
4. MusicXML and Finale’s new forward- and backward-compatible file format.

The main Finale 2014 feature improvement that affects MusicXML import and export is the addition of keyless scores. MusicXML in Finale 2014 supports the different aspects of this feature: music that is in no key signature; music that is tonal but with no displayed key signature; and parts in tonal music that are displayed by hiding the key signatures and showing accidentals. The Dolet 6 for Sibelius plug-in has been updated to improve the transfer of keyless scores from Sibelius to Finale 2014.

Finale 2014 makes it easier to work with MusicXML files. MusicXML files can be dragged and dropped into Finale, or opened from the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. These have been longstanding requests for improving MusicXML workflows with Finale.

The MusicXML support in Finale 2014, the Dolet 6.4 for Finale update, and the Dolet 6.3 for Sibelius update all include other improvements to improve MusicXML transfers. As in Finale 2012b and Dolet 6.3 for Finale, MusicXML support in Finale is now at parity with the Dolet for Finale plug-in; the remaining differences are in additional features like batch import/export and Open Score Format support. Both Finale 2014 and Dolet 6.4 for Finale contain enhancements for expressions, braces and brackets, and lyrics. The Dolet 6.3 for Sibelius plug-in now exports the information about accidentals that was added to the ManuScript language in the Sibelius 7.1.3 release. You can see the full details of what’s new in the release notes for both the Dolet 6 for Finale and Dolet 6 for Sibelius plug-ins.

One of the most notable changes with MusicXML in Finale 2014 is where you no longer need to use it. In the past, older versions of Finale could not read files created by newer versions of Finale. MusicXML was thus the best way to share a Finale 2012 file with somebody using Finale 2011. Finale 2014 introduces a new file format that is both  forward- and backward-compatible, and includes the ability to export back into the old Finale 2012 format. You no longer need MusicXML to share files between Finale 2014 and Finale 2012. MusicXML is still available to share Finale 2014 files with older versions of Finale – back to Finale 2000 on Windows, Finale 2004 on Power PC Macs, and Finale 2007 on Intel Macs.

We hope that Finale 2014 and our updated MusicXML support will make things faster and easier for you, whether you are bringing files from other programs into Finale, or sharing your Finale files with someone using another program.

The MusicXML format has long had widespread support among notation and scanning programs. Digital audio workstations and sequencers have been slower to add MusicXML support, but this has picked up in recent years. Back in 2007, Steinberg was the first major commercial DAW vendor to add MusicXML import and export in Cubase 4.1. More recently, Cakewalk added MusicXML export in SONAR X1 Producer Expanded.

People have been asking for MusicXML export from Apple’s Logic software for a long time. Yesterday, these wishes were granted with Apple’s release of Logic Pro X. This release has garnered rave reviews – for instance, Macworld refers to Logic Pro X as “an amazing piece of work.” The MusicXML export is a terrific boon for musicians who compose in Logic and then want to produce polished scores in a full-featured notation program like Finale. Early reports are that the Logic to Finale transfer via MusicXML is working great. Note that the MusicXML export feature is available from Logic’s Score window.

In our experience, moving a score from DAWs like Logic to notation programs like Finale is a much more common workflow than moving scores in the other direction. So it makes sense that Apple, like Cakewalk, has decided to add MusicXML export support without import. As always, this could change in the future if the companies see increased customer demand.

We are delighted to see that DAW users on both Mac and Windows now have a choice of two powerful programs that let you export your scores to MusicXML files. We are confident that Apple’s and MakeMusic’s mutual customers will find this new version of Logic a terrific boost to making Logic and Finale work better together.