MusicXML

MusicXML is the format notation apps share scores in. Export one from MuseScore, Dorico, Sibelius, Finale or another notation app, and Stab opens it as a song: each part a track, its notes, marks and words, and its guitar parts as tab.

No Stab yet? Open a MusicXML file in your browser, free: nothing to install.

MusicXML

Available on every platform.

Opening a MusicXML file

Choose Open… (⌘O)Open… (Ctrl+O)Import… from the File menu, or Import a File under Bring a Song In on the home. On the home, under Bring a Song In, choose Import a File.
Pick a .musicxml or .xml file, or a compressed .mxl.

You can also drop the file on the home or on a song’s window.

You can also drop the file anywhere on the home.

The song goes into your library as a new song, named after the score’s title (or the file’s name when it has none), and opens. The file itself is never changed.

The web keeps no library: the song opens as a demo to try. To keep it, choose Keep It in Stab Cloud when you leave it; see The Welcome demo.

Parts and tracks

Each part becomes a track, with its name, instrument, volume and pan:

A part on a percussion clef becomes a drum track.
A part with a TAB staff or a tuning, or a guitar or bass (by its sound, instrument or name), becomes tab. Frets written in the score are kept; a part without them is fretted by Stab, as Re-fret does. A note out of the instrument’s range is moved by octaves, and a chord wider than its strings is thinned. Guitar and bass written an octave above how they sound, on a plain treble or bass clef, are taken down that octave.
Every other part becomes a keys lane. A piano’s two staves stay two hands, one on each staff of the Score’s grand staff.

Up to four voices a part are kept. Transposing instruments, such as a clarinet in B♭, keep their written pitch for their part and sound at concert pitch.

What comes in

Notes: ties, grace notes, chords, dynamics (as velocities), staccato, staccatissimo, accents, tenuto, fermatas, slurs, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, natural and artificial harmonics, taps, dead notes, arpeggios, trills and tremolos.
The page’s words: the title, the composer and the arranger, rehearsal marks as sections, words over the staff as text on the notes, tempo marks, chord symbols with their diagrams, and lyrics, up to five verses.
Time: time and key signatures, a pickup bar at its own length, and the sustain and sostenuto pedals as automation lanes.
Repeats and endings, written out in order as the song plays, a repeated passage one linked clip placed on each pass.
Directions: D.C., D.S., Fine, To Coda and the coda are followed as the song plays, as the score’s playback marks say them, or else as the words and signs drawn (“D.S. al Coda”, a segno, two codas: the first is To Coda).

The score’s layout, its beaming and its stem directions aren’t kept: the Score lays the song out itself. When notes were moved by octaves or left out, Stab says how many as the song opens.

When a file doesn’t open

It isn’t a MusicXML score.
It’s a timewise MusicXML score, or a compressed one with no score inside. Export it again from your notation app as an ordinary (partwise) MusicXML file.
It has no notes.
The file is damaged.

To send a song to a notation app, see Exporting MusicXML.

Command	Keys	Where
Open…	`⌘O`	the File menu; the home › Import…

Command	Keys	Where
Open…	`Ctrl+O`	the File menu; the home › Import…

Command	Keys	Where
Import…		the home