Songwriter files with Finale 2014

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Careh
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 10:21 pm
Finale Version: Songwriter2012 PC
Operating System: Mac

Post by Careh » Tue Jun 24, 2014 4:48 am

I am a church musician, singer, and composer, and I have been writing music using Songwriter 2012 on a Dell computer running Windows XP for about a year now. I LOVE the program, but I did run into a problem with the 8 staff limitation since I write for pipe organ, chorus, and orchestra.

I also was very impressed by the Garritan sound library, so I just purchased Finale 2014. I am extremely excited about getting full Finale! My disc should be here this Thursday!! :D I just had a couple of technical questions.

One is concerning the 'mus files that I have finished in Songwriter. Will I be able to open them in Finale, add to them, and change the instruments to the Garritan library, or should I plan on rewriting the pieces? I would like to add more staves and more instruments to the existing files if possible.

Also, will installing Finale 2014 affect my installation of Songwriter, or will it be a completely separate program? The two programs will be running on the same Dell computer running Windows XP.

Thank you for your time, and I am very excited to be getting Finale 2014!!

Carolyn


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Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6601
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Tue Jun 24, 2014 6:15 am

1) Finale 2014 can open documents created in all older versions, including documents created in SongWriter 2012.
When you save the documents from Finale 2014, they will be saved in the new 2014 .musx format.
However, Finale 2014 can also export 2014 .musx documents to the 2012 .mus format (a. k. a. the Finale “legacy” format).

2) Installing Finale 2014 will not affect your SongWriter 2012 installation. They are two completely separate programs.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

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