MusicXML: is it worth it for DP > Finale or Sibelius?

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:42 am

Someone in the Finale forums recently suggested this be added to DP as it is a more reliable way to port MIDI to notation.

Anyone have an opinion on that?

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:54 pm

I think it could be of benefit to composers. Years ago when I was writing for jazz bands, I would print out my basic notation, hand-score it, and then enter that into Finale. Why? ERRORS! It's so easy to miss things on a computer screen but with a physical print in front of you--easy to see. The reason I say "could" is to remember when sequencing, you're after the performance. But that performance doesn't always equal the appropriate notation and vice versa. The only way to know is for MOTU to add it in the future and see how it works. Personally, I would never use it myself because that conversion alone isn't dependable for how I would work. Again, only speaking for myself here.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:59 pm

Thanks Brad. Is there an appreciable difference to SMFs and XMLs? They will be transcribing the same performance so it would seem that we are talking a better quantizing method (or not).

Any idea why one would be better than the other?

TIA.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:01 pm

They're completely different, so evaluate your purpose. SMF's are a concise way of capturing a PERFORMANCE; MusixML's are a way of capturing INTENT.

As MusicML is for notation, it will include all sorts of phrasing, dynamics, articulation, etc. These same attributes can only indirectly be inferred from an SMF capture of a performance of a piece.

It is true that with work, one can make the two very similar. But the decision on which is "best" is really more about your intended audience.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:05 pm

mhschmieder wrote:They're completely different, so evaluate your purpose. SMF's are a concise way of capturing a PERFORMANCE; MusixML's are a way of capturing INTENT.

As MusicML is for notation, it will include all sorts of phrasing, dynamics, articulation, etc. These same attributes can only indirectly be inferred from an SMF capture of a performance of a piece.

It is true that with work, one can make the two very similar. But the decision on which is "best" is really more about your intended audience.

Hmmm... so it would appear that if you are (for example) scoring for orchestra and do a full mock up in DP, an XML would conceivably save you lots of input of dynamics, phrasing and articulation?

If so, then I WANT MY MUSICXML in DP!!!

Thanks for the clarification. Very helpful.

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 5:40 pm

There's this 3rd party program available now called Dolet, which apparently is making transfer between Sibelius & Finale quite seamless using musicXML

http://store.recordare.com/dolet3sib.html

I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds very promising.

At the moment with the DP => Finale/Sibelius route, I have to be careful not to double up on stuff I'm going to lose anyway with the MIDI file transfer. It would be great if via some sort of MusicXML export I could actually 'pick up where I left off' instead of that dreaded "how much of this am I going to have to re-do from scratch?" feeling while I cross every available finger as Sibelius (or Finale) reads the MIDI file.

dbudde · Post by **dbudde** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 6:04 pm

Music XML is an awesome technology. Unfortunately, Sibelius only does export through a plugin and the Sibelius plugin technology (a scripting language called Manuscript) does not support many of the Sibelius constructs. So you still lose information transferring out of Sibelius. It's pretty comprehensive, but there are some significant functions missing (for instance, guitar slides, bends and other guitar articulations). Most orchestral instrument articulations are supported though.

Finale on the other hand provides an SDK for music XLM implementation and so it's my understanding that the Finale export mechanism is fully featured (or at least much more so than Sibelius).

Both Sibelius and Finale have full music XML import built in.

I am hugely in favor of DP supporting music XML in both directions. Either that or figure out a way that any notation program can serve as the notation program inside DP (much like one can specify an external wave editor) to replace DP's Quickscribe.

dbudde · Post by **dbudde** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 6:14 pm

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Hmmm... so it would appear that if you are (for example) scoring for orchestra and do a full mock up in DP, an XML would conceivably save you lots of input of dynamics, phrasing and articulation?

The other alternative to moving files between a notation program and DP is to use the IAC mechanism and just drive DP from the notation program. I do this all the time and it works quite well. For mockup purposes anyway. Once you have a mockup then transferring MIDI data from the notation program for final mixing and automation can be done pretty easily by just recording the mockup in DP and then do the final edits.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:43 pm

dbudde wrote:
MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Hmmm... so it would appear that if you are (for example) scoring for orchestra and do a full mock up in DP, an XML would conceivably save you lots of input of dynamics, phrasing and articulation?
The other alternative to moving files between a notation program and DP is to use the IAC mechanism and just drive DP from the notation program. I do this all the time and it works quite well. For mockup purposes anyway. Once you have a mockup then transferring MIDI data from the notation program for final mixing and automation can be done pretty easily by just recording the mockup in DP and then do the final edits.

The IAC has always eluded me. What I do now it run Finale and setup a few VI's thru DP via Finale's MIDI Setup. Thanks for bringng that to my attention. I have two big orchestral scores that I need to do in Aug and they are both on a fast track, so if I can port 'em quickly, I'd be a very happy camper.

Mike M

ps- I may have found what you are talking about (interapplication MIDI, pp 891 DP 5.0 manual). I tried exporting to the clipboard, but that doesn't paste into Finale. I am guessing it will once I set this up according to the manual.

And hints on a quantize level that seems to be more reliable using IAP?

dbudde · Post by **dbudde** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 12:10 pm

MIDI Life Crisis wrote: The IAC has always eluded me. What I do now it run Finale and setup a few VI's thru DP via Finale's MIDI Setup. Thanks for bringng that to my attention. I have two big orchestral scores that I need to do in Aug and they are both on a fast track, so if I can port 'em quickly, I'd be a very happy camper.

Mike M

ps- I may have found what you are talking about (interapplication MIDI, pp 891 DP 5.0 manual). I tried exporting to the clipboard, but that doesn't paste into Finale. I am guessing it will once I set this up according to the manual.

And hints on a quantize level that seems to be more reliable using IAP?

IAC is not an export mechanism. It is a MIDI bus you can use in real time to connect two apps together. You connect one app's (Finale) output to the IAC. You connect the other app's (DP) input to th IAC. Then when you "play" a file in Finale it will put the MIDI data from Finale on the IAC bus and DP will see it as if you were playing it on some MIDI input device. This way you can set up instruments or whatever in DP and have Finale drive those instruments directly. And DP can record that data as it is being played. Once recorded, you can do the automation and mixing within DP on a second playback pass.

papageno · Post by **papageno** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:49 pm

dbudde wrote:The other alternative to moving files between a notation program and DP is to use the IAC

Finale can save notation file as standard MIDI file. I have exported stuff out from Finale for many years that way. I see no point in recording MIDI data real time via IAC bus or any other MIDI routing system (there are some around).

Of course exporting MIDI file is completely different from notation file.

dbudde · Post by **dbudde** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:08 pm

papageno wrote:
dbudde wrote:The other alternative to moving files between a notation program and DP is to use the IAC
Finale can save notation file as standard MIDI file. I have exported stuff out from Finale for many years that way. I see no point in recording MIDI data real time via IAC bus or any other MIDI routing system (there are some around).

Except that some notation programs (Sibelius in particular) can generate special MIDI commands for sample instruments (like GPO) that do not export as standard MIDI data. It is possible however to get Sibelius to play this special MIDI data to an external app like DP and record it. This is currently an unsupported feature in Sibelius and I doubt this will be the case in the next version. But for the time being, it is very useful to be able to hook this to DP via IAC for recording purposes.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:52 pm

Notion supports MusicXML since its first release. They announced at Summer NAMM that they will finally support MIDI import, so now all three of the major CURRENT notation programs have similar interoperability.

musicxml · Post by **musicxml** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:34 pm

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Is there an appreciable difference to SMFs and XMLs?

There have been some good replies to this question already. For some examples of the difference between MIDI and MusicXML transfer into notation applications, check out "MusicXML: An Internet-Friendly Format for Sheet Music" at:

http://www.idealliance.org/papers/xml20 ... 04-05.html

Section 3 in particular shows examples of MIDI vs. MusicXML transfer into Finale and Sibelius. These examples were from SharpEye Music Reader rather than Digital Performer, but the same principles apply. MusicXML will save far more of your notation when moving between applications than MIDI ever will.

More information about MusicXML is available at:

http://www.musicxml.org/xml.html

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:24 am

musicxml wrote:
MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Is there an appreciable difference to SMFs and XMLs?
There have been some good replies to this question already. For some examples of the difference between MIDI and MusicXML transfer into notation applications, check out "MusicXML: An Internet-Friendly Format for Sheet Music" at:

http://www.idealliance.org/papers/xml20 ... 04-05.html

Section 3 in particular shows examples of MIDI vs. MusicXML transfer into Finale and Sibelius. These examples were from SharpEye Music Reader rather than Digital Performer, but the same principles apply. MusicXML will save far more of your notation when moving between applications than MIDI ever will.

More information about MusicXML is available at:

http://www.musicxml.org/xml.html

I'll look at that for sure, but having just completed a large work start to finish in Finale, I doubt I'll ever use a sequencer again if the work is going to print for certain. Way faster not having ANY conversion issues. Some limitations in terms of playback, but nothing too terrible.

Thanks.