What do you do if someone sends you a Finale file but you don’t have Finale? What do you do when you need to convert an old Finale file to another notation format but you don’t have Finale installed on your new computer, or if Finale stops working on your computer due to a future OS update?
The first problem has existed as long as there has been more than just Finale on the market. The solution was to simply find a friend who had Finale and kindly ask them to convert the file to MusicXML for you — a task I’ve happily done more times than I can count!
The second problem might still be solved by finding a friend who can still run Finale and asking them to convert the file for you, but as Finale drifts further and further into incompatibility, it will become harder and harder to find people to do this.
Enter Robert Patterson, of the famous (and invaluable) Patterson Plug-ins. Unsurprisingly, he’s been thinking about this problem and plotting a solution!
And that solution is already here, in the form of a stand-alone tool called Denigma Online that works right in your browser.
Denigma does basically one thing: it takes a Finale file and converts it to MusicXML without Finale in the loop whatsoever! But there’s a little more to know about it, and a few caveats too, which we’ll take a look at as part of our Overture series.
How it works
- Open Denigma Online in your browser.
- Drag and drop (or choose) a .musx file in the top section.
- Choose your format and set your options (more on this below).
- Press the Convert button.
- Preview, save, or download your file(s).
Options
There aren’t many, but here’s what you can do.
Output format
- MusicXML (uncompressed). Right now this is the most useful option. It will give you an uncompressed MusicXML file similar to what you would get if you had converted directly from Finale. There’s no compressed MusicXML (.mxl) option right now — although that’s planned for a future release — but in my previous writing about exporting MusicXML from Finale, I outlined that the difference between the two is mostly negligible. The one meaningful difference is that compressed MusicXML can also carry some formatting from linked parts, which is of variable usefulness once you import it into another notation program anyway.
- MNX (experimental). MNX is slated to become the successor to MusicXML, but at the moment, apart from a couple of web-based notation readers, no notation app can read it. Robert mentioned that this option is very rudimentary for now, and is more of a proof of concept than anything else. However, in the future, when MNX does eventually succeed MusicXML, Denigma will be the only thing that can convert Finale files to MNX.
- EnigmaXML (proprietary Finale XML). I’ll just quote Robert directly about this option: “EnigmaXML format is the internal xml used by musx. It probably is of no interest to anyone outside a developer. The denigma command line utility can read it, but nothing else. (Not even Finale can read it directly.)”
If you choose the first output format, MusicXML (uncompressed), a few additional options appear.
MusicXML options
- Documents to export. Since uncompressed MusicXML doesn’t carry Linked Parts formatting, this option lets you export each layout as a separate file if you want. There are some formatting limitations in Denigma at the moment anyway, so if what you want is a single file with the score and parts linked together in another notation app, you’re better off exporting only the score and handling the parts in the new app. You’ll have to do some reformatting of the score and parts either way.
- Include playback tempo changes. Checking this box will do just that!
- Cue layer. There’s an option here to help Denigma identify cues from Finale. It will do its best to find them automatically, but if you know that you used Layer 4 exclusively for cues, choosing Layer 4 here causes everything in layer 4 to be treated as a cue. Robert said, “It is useful particularly if cues appear alongside other layers in the same frame. That is, when a cue bleeds into a bar of real music. If cues only appear in their own measures with no real music, selecting this option doesn’t help anything. Whether you choose a layer or not, the same heuristic runs on the other layers.”
Caveats
It’s really a pretty simple tool when it comes down to it, but there are some important limitations and considerations when using Denigma.
First of all, at the top of the page is the disclaimer: “Denigma Online is a work in progress. It may not convert every score correctly yet, so please review exported files before relying on them. Feedback is welcome.”
And indeed, I did run into a couple of files that Denigma could not convert. Robert has indicated that this is an ongoing project that will continue to improve with every iteration; the more use it gets, and the more people report issues, bugs, and limitations, the better it will get! And sure enough, when I sent Robert the two files that didn’t work, he wrote back in less than 24 hours that he had already identified and fixed the issue.
He tells me that currently it’s only been tested with files from Finale v27, but that it should in theory work as far back as Finale 2014, when the .musx file format replaced the .mus format. When possible, though, it’s best to update and save the file in v27 if you can.
As I hinted at earlier, it doesn’t quite do everything that the native Finale MusicXML export does. But as more features get added, it should eventually match Finale v27’s export capabilities, and most likely surpass them, possibly even supporting MusicXML 4.1 whenever that is released. (Finale v27 supports MusicXML only up to version 4.0.)
Another major limitation is that this will not work on .mus files. It has to be a .musx file. Apparently there is some proprietary coding, and some other technical obstacles, that make it all but impossible to get Denigma working with .mus files. So the takeaway, if nothing else, is that the Finale files that matter most to you really should be updated to Finale v27 .musx files!
To that end, Robert does have a Lua script, Upgrade folder to Finale 27…, that runs inside Finale v27 and converts every .mus or .musx file in a folder tree to Finale v27 .musx copies. Again, you need to have Finale v27 in order to use it. He also tells me that it’s highly unlikely that this particular .mus to .musx conversion could ever get a stand-alone tool.
If you’re concerned about privacy, then take note of the second disclaimer at the top of the page: “Private by design: your score stays on this computer. Conversion happens entirely in your browser, and your document data is never uploaded in any format.”
Finally, this is entirely open source. Denigma is free to use for any purpose, and it can be hosted on your own website if you want. The browser version is built on top of the denigma command-line utility, which is already available for anyone who wants to convert files in bulk or build the conversion into their own tools.
Results
Below is a series of screenshots of a file that originated in Finale. This is a particularly tricky one for MusicXML conversion, with its hidden tuplets, cross-staff beaming, and custom slur positioning. You can see that even the files that go directly from Finale’s compressed .mxl export into Dorico or Sibelius come out less than ideal. That’s a general limitation of MusicXML to begin with; the point is that Denigma’s MusicXML results are not all that different from the ones Finale itself produces.
Conclusion
In August of 2024, when MakeMusic announced they were no longer developing Finale, I think there was a collective thud in the pit of everyone’s stomach about one specific thing: what am I going to do with all my Finale files?!?
Since then there’s been a lot of ink spilled about this very topic — I spilled a lot of it myself here, here, and here! There’s been great advice about archiving PDFs, converting from Finale to MusicXML, and importing into your new notation app of choice, but there was always that nagging question: what happens in the future, when Finale is no longer working for me and I need an old file which, for whatever reason, I forgot to convert to MusicXML or PDF? What do I do?!?
Well, Denigma will ultimately be the last line of defense! More than that, as Denigma develops and potentially surpasses the native export capabilities of Finale’s MusicXML 4.0 output, and starts producing MusicXML 4.1 and eventually MNX, it could end up being a better solution than Finale.
All this being said, as of today, if you can convert directly from Finale v27, that’s still a better option than Denigma. Today! Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, that could very easily flip on its head. And if you’re already at the point where using Finale is not an option for you, then Denigma is very capable of converting the essential data in your files into usable, if not absolutely perfect, MusicXML files. This is a tool you should absolutely bookmark. I have no doubt that in time this will be the superior method for rescuing old Finale files!
Have you tried Denigma on your own Finale files? Let us know how it went, in the comments.
Great thing. But it doesn’t work with .mus – Files, right?
Sadly, no. Hence the need for a batch converter from Finale 27, which the Lua script provides.
There is another person also trying to do the same thing (also work in progress):
https://github.com/joris-vaneyghen/musx2mxl/
https://jorisvaneyghen-musx2mxl.hf.space/
Hopefully one or the other of them, or both together, can refine this to a high standard – but already these are really useful.
This is a fantastic service to the Finale community. The .musx format is proprietary and undocumented, but Robert will have loads of knowledge about the internals from his plug-in development work.
Amazingly, I’ve recently seen posts from people who are now having problems getting pre-musx versions of Finale to work, and who still haven’t made XML copies of their files.
Get them converted now!
MuseScore.com has been offering the option to convert files from Finale to MuseScore for quite some time. I don’t know how they do it, but it works: https://musescore.com/upload?format=Finale
On the link you pasted, it clearly says that MuseScore can open files from Finale that are in the MusicXML format. So MuseScore is not directly opening Finale files which are .musx files. That’s the whole point of this Denigma program to convert .musx files into MusicXML files without having to first open the .musx file in Finale to export to MusicXML.
No, that link actually converts .musx files directly into .mscz format.
Oh. That link looks different than it did last time I saw it. But anyway, I see what that is. It looks like what happens is that you upload your Finale file and somewhere on the MuseScore side, an actual person opens your file in Finale and converts it to MusicXML then converts it to the MuseScore format.
I guess that’s handy, but it’s still a manual service. And it’s only good for MuseScore files. How long do you have to wait for those files I wonder? Anyway, Denigma will do it instantly and you can use the MusicXML file in any other program, not just MuseScore.
Hello! I tried Robert’s DENIGMA online and the result was “interesting”. In the full score, I had entries in LAYER 2 which when converted via Denigma, the stems would show in the opposite or incorrect direction.
Robert reviewed my results and noted this anomaly for ongoing development. So the truth is that DENIGMA IS a work in progress. But I remain grateful for Robert’s long dedication and guidance to the FINALE brand!
Enrique