Music scanning applications

[Dorsetmike]

Has anybody had any experience with scanning sheet music, I'd like to scan to MIDI or MusicXML formats that I can feed into Finalé.

[Krummhorn]

I thought either Finalé or Sibelius had a way to scan and create a score from it ... ... or maybe it was something else similar.

From my own experiences, I know that the NWC application can take MIDI and create a musical score from it. But one has to start with a MID file first.

[Dorsetmike]

Finalé do an offer on smartscore, but even $199 is a bit more than I want to pay. Finalé does read Midi files, so a scan to Midi would be ideal, I've found some demo downloads so I'll give them a try today, see how/if they cope, Thee is one with a scan to midi only version for $49 which looks as though it would cope with what I want, but how accurate it is remains to be seen.

[Krummhorn]

Is that the one from Musitek? I looked at that one awhile back too ... says you can't print, but then one wouldn't need to as you already have the score.

Wish they had a trial version.

[Dorsetmike]

Yep, Musitek, I've taken the plunge and bought the "midi" version after a quick try with the trial version. It will make Midi files, which I can feed GO with, Finale will import both Midi and MusicXML.

Considering the original looks like a handwritten original from 1740 ish it's not too bad. I did start by enhancing the original in a photo editing app, improved contrast and brightness, converted to B/W and wiped out as many obvious marks as possible; I also removed the accidentals and the numbers for the figured bass; the # in particular were dire. (for a sample page see my PDF to midi thread) All in all I think it's probably taken me about 4 hours to do 26 measures of 2 staves, and that includes the learning curve!

I will next import to Finalé and work out the figured bass reading from the print or the PDF, so far I have the first movement done "by hand", and half the Allegro Midi-ed, hope to get the rest of the Allegro done this evening, that will just leaave the minuet. May have it finished by next year (still got 2 days of this one!)

I'll try both midi and XML imports just in case there's a difference.

Afterthought; one could almost manage without Finale by using the edit function in SmartScore except that it is slow and not that intuitive at first. Not so bad from a decent print or PDF file but I wouldn't like to do the figured bass work with it.

Now that I know what sort of "enhancements" to make to dodgy originals I'll probably be able top cut that down an hour or more. On a decent printed page probably much less than that. For $49/£32.85 it's probably worth it if you do a fair bit and don't need all the bells and whistles of the dearer versions. (More staves/parts etc)

[Krummhorn]

Great it worked out okay ... another success story and cheers for Musitek

[Dorsetmike]

Previous reort not 100% accurate, the Midi edition does not export MusicXML. only imports it; however as it exports Midi fikles I can import those to Finalé.

Although the file menu on Smartscore includes the save as XML option in the Midi version it does nothing, nor does the auto link-up with Finalé.

You have to plough through a massive PDF manual to find exactly what does and does not work in your version! Many of the options appear in the menus yet are not implemented in various versions.

It would appear from reading the PDF that I could have made further improvements at the image edit stage to improve recognition further.

One item that gave me a few minutes head scratching was that it had not recognised a tenor clef, so a few bars sounded somewhat strange!