Exporting Songworks Music to MP3 Players
The first step will be the same for both Macintosh and Windows computers: Use the Songworks File Menu command "Export MIDI File" to create a MIDI file of your composition. MIDI files are lists of note numbers, times, and instrument numbers. They contain no information about notation, but can easily be imported into programs that produce sound and often can be interpreted into notation as well.
Then,
On Macintosh OSX
On Macintosh you can use the Mac's built-in software to put your Songworks music into iTunes and listen to it on an iPod or even burn it to a CD. Here's how:
(1) Open GarageBand, which should be part of your Mac's set of included applications. Create a New Project in Garageband, which will be a window into which you can place music.
(2) Drag that exported MIDI file onto the Garageband window. Garageband will create tracks for each staff and will assign its own versions of the MIDI instruments you had chosen in Songworks.
(3) Make any changes you'd like and then use the GarageBand menu command "Send Song to iTunes." iTunes will open and you'll see that your piece is now in iTunes and can be added to your iPod list or burned to a CD. Garageband has a good set of included instrument sounds, and also can be used together with add-on sets like the Garritan Personal Orchestra®. You can hear the results of that kind of collaboration in the "Music invented by Songworks" page at the Ars Nova web site.
On Windows
On Windows you can use an inexpensive third-party program such as "MIDI to MP3 Maker 3.0" or "Mid Converter," or others (you can locate them on the internet by Googling "convert MIDI to MP3 Windows." These will open the MIDI file and convert it to MP3 format. Once it's in MP3 format you can place it on your MP3 player or send it to a friend by email.