Opening and Saving Music Files

In addition to its native file format, which it saves in file bundles with a .vlsong extension, VocalEasel is capable of importing and creating a number of other file formats.

Importing Music Files

All available file formats are displayed with the Open... menu item.

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 bugs.

MusicXML

MusicXML <http://musicxml.org> 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 <http://www.wikifonia.org>

Band-in-a-Box

VocalEasel should be capable of importing most Band-in-a-Box <http://www.pgmusic.com> files, although not all styles may work correctly at this point.

Lilypond

Lilypond <http://www.lilypond.org> 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.

Export Formats

To export a VocalEasel song in a different format, use the Save a Copy As... menu item and select the format from the popup menu. File exporting should be fairly reliable already.

PDF

Saves graphical output in Adobe's Portable Document Format

MIDI

Saves music in Musical Instrument Digital Interface format.

MusicXML

Saves file in uncompressed, part-wise MusicXML 1.1 format.

Lilypond

Saves output in Lilypond format.

AIFF

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.

MP3

Saves music in 64 kbps MP3 format, which is much more compact than AIFF and generally has decent enough quality. To save to MP3 format, the LAME MP3 encoder needs to be installed on your Mac (VocalEasel will offer to guide you through the installation).

Importing VocalEasel Songs From Other Software

If necessary, it is possible to import VocalEasel songs into other programs even without running VocalEasel: The .vlsong bundle contains a file Song which is simply the song in uncompressed, part-wise MusicXML 1.1 format.