MusicXML, MIDI, and PDF are not three qualities of the same file. They are three different objects you can make from one SATB draft, and each one throws away something the others keep. PDF keeps the look of the page and throws away the notes as data. MIDI keeps the playback instructions and throws away the notation. MusicXML keeps the score as an editable document and is the file you open in another notation program. Sending the wrong one is how a singer gets a file they cannot open, or an editor gets a picture of notes they cannot change.
Choose the file after you have listened, not before. A CantuStudio draft keeps the melody in the soprano and can flag voice-leading problems, but the export does not review the piece for you. If you have not heard each part, you will be distributing the mistake in a nicer container. This page is the container. The hymn harmonization guide is the musical pass you do first. English pricing is where you check whether the MusicXML download is included in the plan you actually have.
What each file is willing to remember
PDF is a page. It remembers where the noteheads sat, how the systems broke, and what the text looked like, so a printer or a phone can show the same picture. It does not remember that a note is a G in the alto, in the sense that a notation editor can retune it. If you find a wrong pitch after you have sent the PDF, you fix the source and export again. You do not edit the PDF and expect the playback to follow. Treat PDF as the last step for a version you are willing to see on a music stand.
MIDI is a list of instructions: this pitch, this start time, this duration, this velocity. It is small, and almost any device with a synthesizer can play it. It does not reliably carry lyrics, stem direction, slurs as notation, or the difference between a tenor and a bass beyond the pitches you put in the tracks. A singer can learn a line from MIDI. A director cannot engrave a hymnal page from MIDI alone. If someone asks for the score and you send MIDI, you have sent a rehearsal recording, not the music.
MusicXML is the exchange file for notation. It is built to carry pitches, rhythms, clefs, staves, and a useful amount of the score structure from one program to another. Open it in MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico, or Finale when you need to keep editing: add a breath mark, fix a lyric hyphen, respell a chord, or lay the systems out for your paper size. It is not a performance. It is the document. Archive the pieces you care about in MusicXML if you want a later program to read them. A proprietary editor file is only as durable as that editor.
PDF when someone needs to sing from paper or a phone
Send PDF to the folder, the email thread, and the group chat when the goal is reading, not editing. A choir member can open it without installing a notation program. A section leader can print three copies. The page will not reflow into a different layout because their phone prefers another font. That stability is the point. It is also the limit. The moment you need a different key for the basses, the PDF is evidence of the old key, not a tool for the new one.
Print from the version you already rehearsed in playback. A pretty PDF of an unheard draft is how a parallel octave gets photocopied twenty times. Read the cadence on the page the way the score-reading guide describes, straight down the last two chords, before you make the stack. If the text is missing or the hyphenation is wrong, do not hope the printer will fix it. Put the text in the source, then export again. A choir will sing the syllable that is printed, including the wrong one.
PDF is the right attachment when you are sharing a finished reading copy and the wrong attachment when you are asking another musician to continue the arrangement. Say that in the message. Here is the page for Sunday. If you also need the editable score, that is a different file, and it may be a Pro download. Mixing those two sentences is how people reply that they cannot change the alto.
MIDI when a singer needs to hear a line at home
Use MIDI as the practice file. A singer who cannot read quickly can still learn a contour by looping the alto track in the car. Because MIDI is instructions rather than a recording of a particular piano, it stays small enough to message, and the person can slow it down in any player that understands tempo. It will not sound like your choir. It will sound like a synthesizer playing the pitches. That is enough for finding the next note, and it is not enough to judge blend.
One voice at a time is the useful version. A full SATB MIDI file teaches the chord. A file that isolates the tenor teaches the line the tenor could not hear under the soprano. Export or mute so the singer can follow their own part, then put the other voices back when they can hold it. The voice-leading guide is what you check before you send that isolated line. An isolated parallel is still a parallel. Looping it all week will make it feel correct.
Do not send MIDI as the archival copy of the arrangement, and do not send it as the only file to a pianist who needs the lyrics. MIDI can drop into a digital audio workstation if you are building a backing track, and that is a real use. It is a poor use as the score of record. Keep the MusicXML, or the project you edited it in, for the day you need to change a syllable. The MIDI you sent in March will not remember why the alto stepped down.
MusicXML when the score still has to change
Export MusicXML when you, or another musician, will open the notes in an editor. The four voices should arrive as four parts, with the melody still in the soprano if that is how the draft was generated. You can then fix spacing, add dynamics the draft did not have, and prepare a print layout that fits your bulletin. MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico, and Finale are the usual doors. You are not required to live in any one of them. You are required to open the file once and see that the tenor is the tenor before you trust it.
The MusicXML download in CantuStudio is a Pro feature. A free account does not receive the .musicxml file. PDF and MIDI cover the reading copy and the practice file. They do not replace the editable score. If your workflow is generate, then engrave, then print, look at the English pricing page before you promise a collaborator the MusicXML tonight. The MusicXML harmonization page is the import side of the same format: a melody that arrives as MusicXML can be harmonized and, on Pro, leave again as MusicXML. The hymn arranger is the door when the source is a hymn tune rather than a file from another editor.
MusicXML is also the honest archive. Editor files such as a Sibelius or Dorico project are useful while you are in that program, and awkward ten years later if you are not. An open exchange file is the copy you can hand to a future you, or to a substitute director, without also handing them your license. Export it from the version you actually approved. An archive of the first unheard draft, carefully stored, is an archive of the problems you meant to fix.
A practical order for one hymn on a weekday night
Review the draft in the app first. Listen with all four voices, then with one voice muted. Read the voice-leading report and open the bars it names. The report covers parallel fifths and octaves, including compound fifths and unisons, plus crossings, range, and unresolved non-chord tones on strong beats. It does not certify style, text, or copyright. When the version is one you would let the choir learn, then choose files. Exporting three formats of a draft you have not heard only triples the cleanup.
Then make the files in an order that matches the people. MIDI first, if singers need to practice before you see them. MusicXML next, if you still need to engrave or if a colleague will edit, and only if your plan includes that download. PDF last, after the notes and the text have stopped moving, because the PDF is what will be on the stand on Sunday. If you print first and edit second, you will rehearse two different pieces and call them the same hymn.
Say in one sentence what you are sending. Practice track for the altos, not the score. Editable score, open it in MuseScore. Reading copy for the folder, please print. Those sentences prevent the reply that the PDF will not change key, or that the MIDI has no lyrics. The SATB arranger and the SATB arrangement app are where the draft is made. The choir-director tool describes the same loop for the person standing in front of the group. Current plan limits, including what a free account can download, stay on the English pricing page rather than in a guess you text to the section leader.
What not to expect from any of the three
None of the three files clears the rights to the hymn. A public-domain tune can be arranged and shared under whatever terms you already understand. A copyrighted chorus does not become legal because the export succeeded. CantuStudio does not create a license. If you do not know the rights, do not put the PDF in the folder and do not post the MIDI. The format is irrelevant until the permission is real.
None of the three files replaces the director. MIDI will not tell you that the tenors are out this week. PDF will not mark the breath your sentence needs. MusicXML will not decide that the key is a semitone too high for these sopranos. Those are the jobs in the arranging guide, the score-reading guide, and the hymn harmonization guide. The file only carries the decision you already made. If the decision is still open, keep the file on your machine.
None of the three is a promise that the playback you heard is the sound the choir will make. Playback is a check for pitches, rhythm, and obvious voice-leading trouble. Blend, diction, and whether the room can sing the tessitura are rehearsal facts. Use the export to arrive at rehearsal with one version. Use the rehearsal to find out whether that version survives contact with the people. Then, if it does not, change the source and export again. Do not collect formats. Collect a setting the choir can finish.