<title>VocalEasel: Opening and Saving Music Files</title>
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<h1>Opening and Saving Music Files</h1>
<p>In addition to its native file format, which it saves in file bundles with a <tt>.vlsong</tt> extension, VocalEasel is capable of importing and creating a number of other file formats.</p>
<h2>Importing Music Files</h2>
<p>All available file formats are displayed with the <i>Open...</i> menu item.</p>
<p>Like much of the functionality of VocalEasel, file importing is fairly new and little tested. To make file reporting more comprehensive and reliable, please report any import problems as <ahref="bugs.html">bugs</a>.</p>
<h3>MusicXML</h3>
<p>MusicXML <<ahref="http://musicxml.org">http://musicxml.org</a>> is capable of representing a huge variety of sheet music, and VocalEasel only understands a small subset of this: A single melody, with an optional harmony and lyrics. Examples of this kind of MusicXML can be found at Wikifonia <<ahref="http://www.wikifonia.org">http://www.wikifonia.org</a>></p>
<h3>Band-in-a-Box</h3>
<p>VocalEasel should be capable of importing most Band-in-a-Box <<ahref="http://www.pgmusic.com">http://www.pgmusic.com</a>> files, although not all styles may work correctly at this point.
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<h3>Lilypond</h3>
<p>Lilypond <<ahref="http://www.lilypond.org">http://www.lilypond.org</a>> is capable of representing a huge variety of sheet music, and has a rather general purpose input format with procedural elements that is not easy to parse. Therefore, VocalEasel is only capable of importing very simple Lilypond files.</p>
<h2>Export Formats</h2>
<p>To export a VocalEasel song in a different format, use the <i>Save a Copy As...</i> menu item and select the format from the popup menu. File exporting should be fairly reliable already.</p>
Saves music in uncompressed AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) format, if for some reason you would prefer to have your playback track in the highest possible quality.
<h3>MP3</h3>
Saves music in 64 kbps <ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3">MP3</a> format, which is much more compact than AIFF and generally has decent enough quality. To save to MP3 format, the <ahref="http://lame.sourceforge.net">LAME</a> MP3 encoder needs to be installed on your Mac (VocalEasel will offer to guide you through the installation).
<h2>Importing VocalEasel Songs From Other Software</h2>
If necessary, it is possible to import VocalEasel songs into other programs even without running VocalEasel: The <tt>.vlsong</tt> bundle contains a file <tt>Song</tt> which is simply the song in uncompressed, part-wise MusicXML 1.1 format.
