Creating, Opening, Transcribing, Printing, Playing, and Saving Songs

This section of the Composer documentation describes how to work with song files as a whole. Other sections of the documentation describe how to edit details of the music and the score.

Composer reads and writes the following file formats: MIDI (.mid), Karaoke (.kar), and the Notation (.not) file type used by Notation Musician and Notation Composer. Composer also exports music scores as  MusicXML (.xml) files that can be read by other music notation programs, such as Finaletm and Sibeliustm.

You can open a MIDI or Karaoke file already on your system or use Composer's built-in Internet browser to download, unzip (if necessary), and open the file. If you associate Composer with the MIDI .mid filename extension and Karaoke .kar, then when you double-click on a MIDI or Karaoke file name in a directory listing or on a web page, Composer will automatically start and the file will open in Composer's window.

When you open a MIDI or Karaoke file, you can select various transcription options to control the MIDI-to-notation results. If you are not happy with the results of the transcription, you can use the Re-Transcribe command to try out different transcription options.

Composer's New Song Wizard guides you through the steps of creating a new song-- the number of measures, meter, key signature, and list of instrument and vocal parts. Composer offers many templates for new songs, using common musical instruments and ensembles. You can also create your own song templates.

You can view multiple songs at a time, and copy and paste sections between them.

You can print one score part at a time, or a range of measures for a given part. You can also print several separate parts with one command.

Composer offers a variety of options for enjoying and studying music during playback, for listening to multiple songs in a playlist (jukebox), and practicing your instrument or voice with accompaniment.