What converts
The guiding rule is to preserve musical meaning rather than graphical appearance. Notes and rhythm come first; a page break that was in the original does not.
Notes, chords and rhythm
| NWC | MusicXML |
|---|---|
| Note, with any duration NWC allows | <note> with <pitch> and <duration>, in the divisions the score needs. |
| Dots, double dots | The duration itself; a dotted value is one number, not a note plus a tie. |
| Triplets and other tuplets | The duration is exact. The <time-modification> element that would print the bracket is not emitted yet. |
| Chord | One <note> per pitch, the second and later ones marked <chord/>. |
| Rest | <note><rest/> with the same duration handling. |
| Grace note | <grace/> immediately before the pitch, with no <duration> — the schema puts grace notes in a separate content branch. |
| Articulations and ornaments on a note | <notations><articulations> and <ornaments> on the note they belong to. |
Pitch and accidentals
NWC counts staff positions from the middle line, so pitch depends on the clef in force. Each clef has a reference pitch on that line — B4 for treble, D3 for bass, C4 for alto, A3 for tenor — and a position is a step offset from it. Explicit accidentals are written on the note and, as in ordinary notation, carry through the rest of the measure for that pitch class until the bar line resets them or another accidental overrides them.
Staves and parts
| NWC | MusicXML |
|---|---|
| Each staff | One <part>, in staff order, from a matching <part-list>. |
| Staff name | <part-name>. A generic Staff-1 gives way to the MIDI instrument's name, and then to a positional Staff-N; duplicate names are made unique because MusicXML requires it. |
| Staff visibility | print-object="no" on the part name for a hidden staff, so the notes stay in the file. |
| Staff group (bracket or brace) | <part-group> with the matching group symbol. |
| Transposing instrument | <transpose><chromatic>, so a written part sounds at the right pitch. |
| MIDI channel, program, volume, pan | <midi-instrument> in the part list. |
Clefs, keys and time
A clef, key or time signature that appears before the staff's first
sounding note becomes part of the first measure's
<attributes>. The same record appearing later is a
mid-staff change, and is emitted as a minimal
<attributes> block at that point in its measure. Key
signatures are counted in fifths on the circle, so the signature, its
tonic and the accidental count all agree.
Directions: tempo, dynamics, text
| NWC | MusicXML |
|---|---|
| Tempo marking | <direction> with <metronome> and a matching <sound tempo="…"/>. A tempo that carries text — With Expression — keeps the text and sets parentheses="yes" on the metronome mark. |
| Dynamic marking | <direction-type><dynamics>, plus <sound dynamics="N"/> when the staff's DynVel table gives that marking a velocity. |
Hairpin (Opts:Crescendo, Opts:Diminuendo on notes) | <wedge type="crescendo"/> … <wedge type="stop"/>. |
DynVariance: Crescendo, Diminuendo | Written text, <words font-style="italic">cresc.</words> or dim. — these are the words, not the hairpin. crescOff ends them silently. |
TempoVariance: rit., ritenuto, accel., … | <direction> with the standard abbreviation as italic words. |
TempoVariance:Fermata | <notations><fermata/> on the note or rest that follows it, because NWC records the fermata before the note it decorates. |
| Text direction | <words>, placed above or below according to the sign of NWC's Pos field when no explicit placement is given. |
Slurs, ties and bar lines
NWC marks every note under a slur, so the converter places
<slur type="start"> on the first marked note and
<slur type="stop"> on the first note after the run that
is not marked — the landing note, which is where the arc ends. A
slur still open at the end of a staff is closed on its last note, and up
to six simultaneous arcs are numbered so each pair is distinct.
A tie is the ^ suffix on a position: the note is tied forward
to the next note of the same pitch. Bar lines carry their style —
double, section close, and the master and local repeat marks — and a
staff's EndingBar property sets the style of the final
barline, including multi-word NWC values such as Section Close.
Page, fonts and metadata
| NWC | MusicXML |
|---|---|
PgMargins left, right, top, bottom | Asymmetric page margins in <defaults><page-layout>; the copyright line is placed from the bottom margin. |
Font records | <word-font> from the first staff font and <lyric-font> from a staff-lyric font. |
| Title, author, lyricist, copyright, comments | <work>, <identification> and <credit> elements. |
| Lyrics | <lyric> with syllabic type. Emission exists, but has not been validated against a golden score — see the limits. |
What is not carried over
Graphical layout: absolute positions, staff spacing, per-element font sizes, page breaks and anything else that affects only how the page looked in NoteWorthy Composer. A notation program will lay the score out itself, and will do it better than a reconstruction of another program's decisions would. The limits page covers the rest.