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Mike, don’t confuse the abilities of a certain level of MusicXML with the import or export correctness of the implementation.
Who’s confused? All one has to do is read the release notes of MusicXML to know what the various builds can and cannot do. Unfortunately, this board does not let me include links.
Until Myriad gets off their butts and implements MusicXML 4.0, the myriad of problems (pun intended) encountered by MuseScore users cannot be fixed. You can Google Michael Good’s change log by looking for The MusicXML version history is now published in the MusicXML 4.0 Community Report which will take you to a MakeMusic page with a good link..
One could still argue that “Harmony Assistant + PDFtoMusic (std)” costs 15% less than PDFtoMusic Pro,…
And the need to get familiar with “score editing” in Harmony Assistant should not be overlooked.So what? Neither app is useful to me. Using both is just a way to waste more time. Score editing in Harmony Assistant? Not for the work I do. My score editing is done in Finale.
PDFtoMusic Pro saves me time on occasion which is why it’s worth the $199. Although pretty good with Encore files, it’s useful only about 1/3 the time. It can’t read a lot of music fonts used in newer apps and just makes a mess of those. It’s faster if I delete text and re-enter by hand. This is not the same as pdf files with no font info that it’s never been able to read. I have SmartScore 64 NE Pro for those.
Nowadays, the dominant exporter is no longer Finale, but has become MuseScore.
I assume that, by dominant, you are referring to the numbers of scores being converted and complaints being lodged. If so, this is correct. MuseScore now supports MusicXML 4.0 as does Dorico. The implementation is not as good as Finale’s, still the only one with a complete integration of 4.0 — well, Sibelius uses a 4.0 converter (the free Dolet 8 plug-in) from MakeMusic written before Mr. Good retired so it should be completely compatible.
I use Myriad’s PFDtoMusic Pro for converting Encore files. As far as I can tell, it uses MusicXML 3.0 although the last announcement from Myriad was that they were implementing 2.0 but that was years ago.
This is the problem. Finale users can select the version of MusicXML for export from 1.0–4.0. Can’t be done in MuseScore 4.x. as xml 4.0 is the only choice. Until PFDtoMusic Pro and Harmony Assistant adopt 4.0, that problem will remain. Neither can handle dashed(dotted) slurs and if you see those, give it up and enter by hand to save time. I speak from experience.
Although MakeMusic owns MusicXML, the developer’s toolkit is free. I’ve no idea if MM still has an engineering team to assist 3rd party developers but in any case, Myriad needs to get off their collective butts if this problem is to be solved.
Back to Encore. The Win version of E5 supports xml 1.1 while the Mac version supports 1.3. MusicXML export is kind of ridiculous. Not so with PDF. By having printed all of my Encore files to PDF, they all convert ok in PFDtoMusic Pro. Its Lyrics handling is not great and Text elements always wind up in the wrong place but those can be dragged around.
I still consider Harmony Assistant @ $95 to be a waste of money but PFDtoMusic Pro @ $199 to be a time saver and hope that it gets good someday.
Encore 5 opens MTD files created by myself and others. I do not expect E6 to be different but we won’t know until one of us gets the new version to test.
For sure, the demo version cannot save/write files. Not even for a 30-day period – what is possible with some products such as Overture.
What Andre said. The demo version cannot be converted to the release version.
In fact, if you find a download link anywhere for the release version of 5.7 for the Mac, there’s a tweak that one must run that turns it into 5.6 1303M so that it accepts a serial number and works properly over Mojave, the only macOS one should be using. Both Andre and I have the files and instructions.
My email is m i k e (a) h a l l o r a n m u s i c dot c o m — please put something in the title like Need Encore file or similar so that I don’t dismiss the request.
As far as I can tell, Myriad is using the same implementation of MusicXML 3.0 in both Harmony Assistant and PDFtoMusic Pro. It does work but not very well. It’s above terrible and below horrible.
Don spend a long time and many builds getting Overture to handle MusicXML 3.0 as well as it does which is pretty good. Just yesterday, I exported a score I did in Overture 5 and it opened up perfectly in Finale 27.4.1. I also tried a MIDI export/import with the same level of success but without lyrics, of course.
Contrary to popular belief, MusicXML is not something that one just adds to an application—would be nice if it were. It is a developers’ toolkit. How well it works is wholly dependent on how well an app’s developers integrate it.
Finale, for example is the MusicXML standard since MakeMusic bought Recordare and made its owner, Michael Good—the inventor of MusicXML, a MM vice president (2012?). He and he and his team are responsible for every version since up through the release of 4.0. Mr. Good retired before MM discontinued Finale last year and has a non-compete clause with a few more years on it as I understand it. We’ve known each other since 1979 and have worked on shows together as recently as last year.
use Parallels Desktop for a Windows environment on my Macbook. This allows me to run both Encore 5.0.4 and Overture 5.6.3, both created by Don Williams.
Don did not write Encore 5. The company was sold after Encore 4 but before 4.5.5 IIRC. He bought the source code from Passport Designs after they went out of business three years ago.
I have no idea how accurate this Wiki timeline is. Anyway, Sonic Scores is Don.
“Encore was originally created for the Apple Macintosh by Don Williams for the US company Passport Designs Inc. of Half Moon Bay, CA., and first released in 1984.[1]
Lyrrus Inc., d.b.a. GVOX purchased the intellectual property of Passport in 1998[2] and Encore 5 was released 10 years after Encore 4.
Encore is notable for being one of the first scorewriter programs to enable items in the musical score to be added and edited using the mouse.[3]
Encore 5 included wizards to create scores for numerous types of ensembles from scratch, MusicXML support (although in now obsolete 1.3 version), use of VST, and J.S. Bach complete works for keyboard in Encore format.
On August 1 of 2013, Passport Music Software LLC,[4] acquired the rights of Encore, Music Time Deluxe and MasterTracks Pro.
On June 16 of 2022, Sonic Scores, Inc,[5] acquired the rights of Passport Music Software, Encore, Music Time Deluxe and MasterTracks Pro.”
I think that you can do it using Crossover. I’m not certain.
Maybe but that will be the Windows version of Encore running on the Mac.
Interestingly, as long as Crossover has been out, I’ve never heard of someone reporting back that they has done it.
I still don’t understand what “multiple musics” means.
Do you mean multiple movements in one file? If so, that does require a PDF Editor app. There are hundreds that can do this from the free including Apple’s Preview and Cute PDF to very expensive such as Adobe’s Acrobat DC.
Mike, I saw that you just replied this, but cannot find your message…
Yep. Many of my posts are not showing up. When I go to repost them, I’m told I’m about to create a duplicate. Time to call Don but I won’t have time for a couple days.
Apparently, the problem occurs when I include links. Well, they used to work…
I’m not certain what you mean by ”multiple musics” unless you are referring to the Cues. Cues and clef changes are easy to create in Encore and are explained pretty clearly in the Manual.
Someone did a nice job on that trombone part. I am assuming this was done in Windows. The Mac version of Encore never had slurs that looked this nice.
In the upper left corner of the window containing your score click on “Voice -” and select “2” (or “3”, “4”, etc.). Then in Lyric Entry mode click the note on the staff where you want to enter text. You can drag that line of lyrics up and down by clicking and holding the arrow in the margin and dragging up or down. When you are done adding lyrics, click on “Voice x” again and select “All Voices”. When you are editing lyrics, you should select the voice again if it is not voice 1.
It’s my favorite feature of Encore, hands down. Compared to the way that all other notation apps do it (especially Finale!), it’s a major time saver for me. I hope that E6 if we ever see it doesn’t mess with that.
I like that I can use any font and size installed on my Mac. I prefer Minion Pro that one can get free from Adobe by downloading annd installing Acrobat Reader. You have to install the font so that it is available to all apps and all users—how is different depending on if you are running Mac or Windows.
Apparently the recommended OS version is Mojave, and that I can see High Sierra is older.
Correct on both counts. There are errors with Encore in High Sierra that cannot be resolved except by upgrading to Mojave. Your Mac must support Metal Graphics (all built between 2012–2018) to run Mojave.
One runs the 5.0.7 installer, then overwrites the file with another so that, when all is said and done, Encore reads 5.0.6 1303M when you click on About and it will also remember your serial number. Andre has the files and instructions for this as do I.
If that does not fix you up, the problem will be remnants of older versions. I have additional instructions for purging everything Encore/Passport/Gvox related before reinstalling. Save your serial number.
I’m not sure that scores created in Encore 4.1 will be read by Encore 5.
Yep, that’s a crapshoot. My wife threw out my G4, the last Mac I had that could run Encore 4.5.5 over OS 9 and OS X 10.4.11. It could read anything and save a copy in Encore 5.0.4 that could be read by 5.0.7. I have been successful in opening 4.5.5 in 5.0.6 1303M, that may have been one of its many bug fixes after I complained to Richard.
Hi Branko,
Here you go. The results are not great, however.
I received your file. It opened it on my old Mac in Encore 5.0.7 — no problem, then printed to PDF and it looked pretty good. I also exported to MIDI and MusicXML 1.3, the highest that Encore 5 supports—no lyrics or expressions, unfortunately.
I then opened it in PDFtoMusic Pro on my current Mac running Sequoia where it reported multiple errors. I exported that to MusicXML 3.0, the highest level supported by PDFtoMusic Pro. This was then opened in both Finale 27 and MuseScore 4.5.2 with similar results. Doesn’t look very useable and would probavly take less time to enter by hand.
The problem is that PDFtoMusic Pro could not interpret much of the font information contained in your Encore 5 file. Although it works fine for me, I will not recommend that you spend the $199 to purchase it. You can use PDFtoMusic Pro for free but you are limited to exporting one page at a time—too long when your score has many pages. Then you have to reassemble the pages in a different app—also time consuming.
The original MusicXML 1.3 export on my old Mac has no expressions or lyrics but imported much better into both Finale and MuseScore. By comparing with the PDF file, adding lyrics and expressions might take less time than starting from scratch.
I then sent everything back.
Mike
