Editing with Finale PrintMusic, should I download MXL or XML files?

Posted February 19th, 2009 by longfinger

Hi,

Sometimes I want to download a file, fix it up a bit and them upload it. What works best with Finale PrintMusic? It can import both MXL and XML but which would give me the least problems?

I have find some files to be weird in Printmusic, as in buggy. The main things work, but sometimes things like chord symbols spacings look odd and are hard to change.

thanks,

Both are the same

On February 19th, 2009 lasconic says:

MXL and XML files are the same. MXL is just a compressed version of XML one. So the rendering in Finale should be the same. And Finale is perfect for editing a sheet and upload it again.
I use MuseScore because it's free (as in speech) but PrintMusic should be at least as good :)

Regarding chord name spacing, it should not be a problem if the chords are attached to different notes. Sometimes for example, with two chords on a whole note, some programs don't store the position but only the order. Wikifonia does not change the uploaded musicXML. But it prints the chord names in the right order. So it might happen that two or more chords overlap in Finale because it relies on position and not on order.
Hope I'm clear :) The conclusion is: Finale is perfect to edit a sheet and if you correct the chord position in Finale and upload the sheet again on wikifonia it will be valuable to the community!

Thanks, lasconic. I had the

On November 15th, 2011 AllieColeman says:

Thanks, lasconic. I had the same question and your answer helped me a lot as well. I'm going to try out MuseScore and see how it works! I was worried that the chord spacing would actually matter and thought that it would sound differently when I listened to the edited song with my headphones. I am going to mess around with the sounds of a certain song that I found on here and see if I can edit it correctly. Thanks again!