Last Friday, MakeMusic announced the release of Finale 2012. This is the first music notation editor with full support for the reading and writing MusicXML 3.0 files.
MusicXML 3.0’s new taxonomy of standard instrument sounds works together with Finale 2012’s Score Manager, making it easier to transfer playback setups between applications. Finale 2012 will set playback to VST or Audio Units automatically when importing a MusicXML 3.0 file that includes a virtual instrument. Finale 2012 is available at the Recordare Online Store to customers in the USA.
Recordare has also released an updated version of Dolet 6.1 for Finale plug-in that adds Finale 2012 support. This is a free maintenance update for Dolet 6 for Finale customers.
Finale 2012 takes advantage of MusicXML 3.0’s new instrument taxonomy when moving files from Sibelius to Finale. For example, an instrument set up to sound like a trumpet in Sibelius will now be set up to sound like a trumpet when imported into Finale 2012. You will need Recordare’s Dolet 6 for Sibelius plug-in to do this, as Sibelius 7’s built-in MusicXML export supports MusicXML 2.0, not MusicXML 3.0.
The past few weeks have also seen some notable additions to MusicXML application support:
- Antares has added MusicXML support to their Auto-Tune EFX 2 plug-in. How does MusicXML work with a pitch correction and vocal effect plug-in? There is a new vocal pattern generation feature in EFX 2. The available patterns are specified with a user-editable MusicXML file. It’s great to see MusicXML being used in such different ways in new applications!
- Cakewalk has added MusicXML export to their SONAR digital audio workstation, as part of the SONAR X1 Producer Expanded release.
- The Mozart notation editor has added MusicXML import in its version 11 release.
I am hoping that Finale 2012’s support of many of MusicXML 3.0’s key features will lead more applications to update their MusicXML support to version 3.0 as well. You can keep up to date with what applications offer MusicXML support at Recordare’s web site: