Translating Finale projects to Dorico using MusicXML

Since the news that Finale has been discontinued, the main questions we’ve received from Finale users looking to migrate to Dorico concern what to do with their existing Finale projects, and how to move them over to Dorico. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about when it makes sense to translate projects to Dorico and when it doesn’t, how to safely archive your Finale projects for future translation, and how best to approach the job of translating projects to Dorico. Let’s dive in!

Opening Finale files directly

Many Finale users would, understandably, like to open their Finale .mus and .musx files directly in Dorico. Although it would be technically possible to read Finale files directly, with the cooperation of our partners at MakeMusic and a significant expenditure of effort from the Dorico development team, in practice this would actually work less well than using MusicXML.

Finale’s native document format was never designed to be read or understood by any other program. The data in the file only makes sense to Finale, and for another program to be able to recreate the graphical results you see when opening the project in Finale in another program, it would be necessary to reverse engineer and reimplement many parts of Finale, which is impractical.

By contrast, the MusicXML format is expressly designed for this job, and Finale’s MusicXML export features are very rich. MusicXML files exported from Finale capture not only all of the musical content of the document, but also a good deal of the graphical appearance. Different applications read more or less of this information when importing MusicXML files, but it can at least be encoded in a way that is practical for other applications to read it, and those applications (including Dorico) can be updated to read and interpret more of that data without needing to reverse engineer a proprietary file format or application.

Archiving your Finale projects

Although Finale is no longer being developed, there’s no reason to worry that Finale will suddenly stop working on your current computer, provided you don’t update your operating system. Finale should carry on working just as well tomorrow as it does today, so there is no rush to archive all your Finale projects. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to make a start on the process when you can.

We recommend that you create PDF, MusicXML, and MIDI versions of your Finale projects, and keep them together with the original Finale documents. Keep backups of all of these files, ideally in at least one off-site location (which could be a hard disk you keep in another safe place away from your main workplace, or in the cloud, or both). You might also consider exporting an MP3 or other audio file of your projects, in case you want to be able to listen to their playback in future.

For details of how to export MusicXML files, read our guide. Enterprising Finale users are developing ways to help automate the production of MusicXML and PDF files using third-party tools, including this one based on FileMaker Pro, this one using PHP, and others are experimenting with automation via FinaleScript.

When (and when not) to translate your projects

You do not need to translate all your existing Finale projects to Dorico (or any other program). Unless you actively need to revise the project, there’s no need to go to the time and trouble of checking and editing the project again in your new program.

To review the music yourself, or if you need to share the music with somebody – for a new performance or other similar enquiry – then simply use or share the PDF file. If the person you’re sending the music to wants to hear roughly how it will sound, if you’ve made an audio file, you can send that too.

If you need to make only a small adjustment to the music – for example, to transpose it into a new key – then ideally you would open the original Finale file in Finale, make the adjustment, and create new PDF, MusicXML, MIDI and audio files from the adjusted version.

If many years have passed and you can no longer run Finale, or if you need to consider more substantial revisions to the work, that is when it makes sense to translate the project into your new software, and that’s where MusicXML shines.

How to translate a project into Dorico

When you bring a MusicXML file into Dorico, don’t expect that everything will look exactly the same in Dorico as it did in Finale (or whichever application produced the MusicXML). Dorico does not try to import every graphical detail described in the MusicXML file: instead, Dorico aims to import all the musical information, but leave the fine graphical details to its own sophisticated algorithms.

In Finale you have to spend quite a lot of time adjusting the placement of items to prevent them from colliding with each other or the staff. You also need to intervene in vertical spacing, moving staves and systems manually, and you may also perform a lot of formatting adjustments, moving bars between systems to produce a pleasing and balanced layout.

In Dorico, all of these processes are performed automatically (though you can of course adjust everything yourself if you wish). So our approach is to try to treat the MusicXML as just a source of musical information, and rely on Dorico’s automatic layout engine to produce pleasing graphical results on its own.

Before you import a MusicXML file into Dorico, we recommend taking a look at the MusicXML Import page of Preferences. This dialog determines which graphical aspects of the MusicXML file Dorico should preserve, and which it can take care of on its own. To allow Dorico a freer hand in notating the music, more or less exactly as if you had typed the music in yourself directly, deactivate as many of the options as possible. Conversely, to maintain more of the specific appearances of items you have created in Finale, activate more of the options.

Our recommendation would be to allow Dorico as free a hand as possible. The resulting Dorico project will have fewer overrides that interfere with its automatic behaviours, and you will typically find it quicker and easier to work with the project if it is as close as possible to how Dorico behaves when you type the music in directly.

Regardless of your import settings, expect to spend some time reviewing the layout and formatting of the score and parts. As always, start by making changes in the Layout Options dialog to tweak staff size, vertical gaps, and casting-off settings, before you start making individual changes on each system and page. Even when dealing with an imported MusicXML file, you should always look for global solutions to things that don’t look exactly as you want them to, rather than immediately fixing individual things.

Troubleshooting problems

Music missing after a certain point

One problem you may run into when importing complex projects from Finale into Dorico concerns tuplets. In Finale it’s quite easy to create tuplet structures that contradict the time signature, and Finale will happily display these bars as if everything adds up. When you bring these files into Dorico, you may find that at a certain point, the music for a particular instrument simply stops, and does not come back for the rest of the piece. If this happens, it means Dorico has encountered a non-notatable rhythm, and because of the way that music in Dorico is represented as a continuous stream rather than being stored in bars, a non-notatable rhythm can throw off the rest of the import of that voice altogether.

If this happens, ideally you should return to Finale and correct the rhythmic error. If you can’t see how to correct it, try deleting the music from the bar where the music disappears, then re-export the MusicXML file and bring it back into Dorico. You will need to manually input the missing bar into Dorico after importing the file.

Missing time signatures

If your original Finale document uses large time signatures, it’s a good idea to undo this before you export the MusicXML file from Finale. If you don’t, you will find that Dorico shows normal time signatures on only a few staves, while the rest of the staves show open meter. This is because that is precisely what the MusicXML file says, and because Dorico can happily allow multiple different time signatures, that is what it produces.

Typically large time signatures are handled in Finale by hiding time signatures on most staves, either using the Global Staff Attributes plug-in, or the Staff Attributes dialog. Make sure all staves are showing time signatures (and if the sight of overlapping time signatures offends your eyes, go to Document > Document Options, choose the Fonts page, and edit the Time (Score) font to use Maestro, or whatever music font you are using, instead of Engraver Time).

Now export the MusicXML file from Finale again, and import it into Dorico. To restore large time signatures in Dorico, go to the Time Signatures page of Layout Options and activate Show once per bracket under Time signature position and size, and make any other adjustments you wish – to see narrow time signatures like those from Engraver Time, also set Time signature design to Narrow, sans serif.

Extra notes at trills and tremolos

If you find after importing your MusicXML file that there are many unexpected notes at trills and tremolos, that suggests there was a problem with Human Playback in your original Finale project. Human Playback adds hidden notes to the document before playback, and then removes them again when playback stops. Under some circumstances, these hidden notes can remain when playback stops, and will then be included when you export your file to MusicXML. You can remove these notes using the Apply Human Playback dialog, found in the MIDI Tool menu. Remove the hidden notes, and re-export your MusicXML file.

Others

For more tips on less common issues that can occur when importing MusicXML files from Finale, read this thread on the Dorico forum.

Help is at hand

If you are unsure how best to proceed with translating your Finale projects to Dorico, please ask questions on the Dorico forum, and we will be pleased to help you. It is even possible to hire specialists to translate projects for you, for a price: music service companies like JoAnn Kane Music Service, Fine Line Music Service, NYC Music Services, Black Ribbon Music Preparation, and Coda Scores, along with many others, can handle this kind of work.

Not yet switched to Dorico?

If you’re a Finale user reading this and you are considering switching to Dorico, you can save 75% on the price of Dorico Pro for a limited time. Simply log in to the MakeMusic store to find your special offer. You can also try all the features of Dorico Pro completely free of charge with a 60-day trial version. When you’re ready to take your first steps with Dorico, check out our Getting Started page.