15. Saving and exporting

Exporting MusicXML

MusicXML is how notation apps trade scores. Export it to finish a score in MuseScore, Dorico or Sibelius, to give a part to someone who reads notation, or to open the song in another tab app.

Exporting MusicXML

Available on every platform.

Exporting

Open the Export sheet and pick MusicXML (or choose File › Export As › MusicXML…), then What (the whole song, the loop or the selection’s bars) and Tracks. Export writes the .musicxml file in the folder shown.Download hands the .musicxml file to the browser.

What the file holds

The file is the score as the Score writes it, at concert pitch, with every bar written out (repeats played out in order):

• A part for each guitar, bass or keys track, with its clef, key and time signatures.
• Notes and rests in up to four voices a staff, and a piano’s two staves.
• Ties, tuplets and staccato.
• A fretted part’s tuning, and each note’s string and fret, so a tab app shows the same fingering. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are written as such.
• Fingering: a note’s finger and plucking finger, and its pick direction (as down-bow and up-bow marks, which Stab reads back as pick direction).
• Slurs, above or below the notes where the song places them.
• Lyrics, with the line that carries a syllable over several notes.
• Smart Tracks as the notes they play, and the Chords track’s chords on a part.

Drum tracks and audio tracks are left out: the sheet says so under Not in this file before you export. A song with no guitar, bass or keys track can’t be exported as MusicXML: the format is greyed, and says why.

Stab reads MusicXML back too: see MusicXML.

For a score to print or read rather than to edit elsewhere, export it as a PDF: see Exporting the Score as PDF.

A song shared with you whose owner keeps it in Stab has no exports; see Shared songs. Any song you can open, you can export.