Music Notation Best and Worst for MusicXML - Compare Dorico Finale GuitarPro Sibelius MuseScore

[@rafaelivanircostaoliveira1354]

Thanks for great vídeo and working.

[@GuitarBasement]

Thanks for watching!

[@SamBuchl]

Super useful video; thank you! Hopefully the software publishers will check this video out!

[@GuitarBasement]

Thanks! My guess is that they are probably aware of their issues, but they will prioritize how much attention this kind of issue gets.

[@tuomasvaltonen9022]

@@GuitarBasement Problem is the standard. Finale guys are the ones who made the standard so their parser is the best for strictly standard wise xml. MuseScore actually reads the format well but if you export a MusicXML from it it does really bad stuff to the file. Sibelius own import export is SHIT but it is for me the easiest to make nice looking scores. DOLET plugin for Sibelius fixes the file format issues. big problem is that some software use rehearsal mark tags to have system text and others words instead. I actually made several MusicXML parsers in my life for extracting musical data to my mobile apps. And it is the format that is the root cause. you can do same things in many ways. Also different software use different encoding to write their files. some are UTF8 and some UTF16 which is another layer of problems as the 8 doesn't have the same symbol set as the 16.

[@daviddavis6972]

Nice video thanks. 👍🏾

[@GuitarBasement]

Thanks David

[@herbertgarf]

Best Job! Thanks

[@GuitarBasement]

Thanks!

[@25mileswest86]

Hi - interesting... are you on latest version of GP and Dorico.? Maybe, in the case of Dorico, its already had some improvements/fixes..? Either way, no doubt Dorico developers would be keen to look at your MusicXML file from GP, to see whats going on. Post a note about it on their forum pages..? Just a suggestion

[@GuitarBasement]

I used all the latest updates for GP and Dorico. Finale created MusicXML, so you would expect it to be flawless in Finale. Musescore was a surprise. I guess I could post something on the Dorico forums. Thanks for the comment.

[@TheBinaryWolf]

Have you found any software that fully accommodates the needs of a guitarist, like playback of pull-offs, realistic strumming and sound that is not synthetic?

[@GuitarBasement]

For me, Guitar Pro does the best job for guitar, but I'm not really expecting it to sound exactly like a recorded instrument. The fact that you do have bends, pull-offs, strumming etc is hard to simulate because each player's technique is different. I mostly use it for documentation. I guess you would need some kind of humanizing effect perhaps done in the style of different players. I seem to remember Band in a Box having pretty good simulations of certain players, but that was years ago. Perhaps there are more sophisticated engines for that now, but I don't know what they are.

[@TheBinaryWolf]

@@GuitarBasement In an age of AI, you would think a pull-off, even a basic one, would be available. And a simple strum, like up and down (i.e. a super fast arpeggiated chords) does not seem so great a challenge in computing. Perhaps guitar is largely ignored by developers because most guitarists cannot read conventional music.

[@innerthreatcircus5651]

have you tried to create the score in Dorico and the do the test? Or MuseScore, I think GuitarPro might be generating the bad XML and you can't forge programs to read bad XML.

[@GuitarBasement]

In the video I believe I showed that the file came into Finale almost perfectly. I don't know if that wasn't made clear. MuseScore too. There are some things I love about Dorico, but this is one thing that it just doesn't do well. It's also not that great for guitar - unless it's strictly classical. But harmonics in ver 4 are a bit of a mess too. I was actually in contact with them about this but eventually they stopped responding. I love the flows feature, but that has some serious issues. The best thing I found recently is the graphic slices to export into other programs. The program could be so much more and I think they are trying. I'd like to use it exclusively but can't because of its limitations. Guitar Pro is just so much less cumbersome and intuitive. Thanks for your comments!

[@innerthreatcircus5651]

@@GuitarBasement I agree I that's why I also have guitar pro. I used to write guitar centric metal songs (sometimes more like dream theater, sometimes more like Steve Vai or Joe satriani) and guitar pro was so much easier to get my compositions done, that I would compose first and then learn to play it on the guitar. I purchased dorico pro 4 like a week before the version 5 came out, and the curve isn't just any curve. So much dedication to the software has been needed that I almost didn't have time to write music. But I'll keep going since investment is already made and I'm using it for orchestral film scoring with spitfire bbcso (and in this space I haven't seen any composer using guitar pro)

[@innerthreatcircus5651]

you can forget that? Not getting the right instrument? What if you had an orchestra and had to change 20 instruments?