Sheet Music Scanner
Reads notes from a photo or PDF of sheet music, lets you fix mistakes, and exports MusicXML and MIDI
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Turns a photo, scan or PDF page of printed sheet music into notes you can correct, play and export as MusicXML or MIDI, so a melody from a song book reaches a notation program without typing.
How to use
- Drop a picture or PDF on the page, press "Take a photo" on a phone, or "Load example". For a PDF, choose pages under "Pick a page" and press "Read selected pages".
- Wait for the stages; "Cancel" stops them. The score appears next to the "Source picture" with every found note outlined; orange means unsure.
- Click a note in the score or the picture and fix it with ↑ ↓, "Length", "Dots", "Accidental", "Note / rest", "Chord", "Tie", "Insert after" or "Delete"; "Undo" takes a change back. Clef, key and time signature are in the row below.
- Press "Play" to hear it, then "Download MusicXML" or "Download MIDI". "Open the music studio" leads to the studio, which imports the MusicXML file.
How it works
- For printed single-staff music (melody, songs, flute, violin) and piano grand staves. Handwritten music and tablature are not read; dense piano scores have many errors.
- The recogniser removes the staff lines, reads clefs, keys, times, notes, beams, dots, rests and accidentals, and splits bars at the barlines. Slurs, dynamics and lyrics are ignored. Always compare the result with the picture.
- Pictures are reduced to 2400 pixels on the long side. Everything runs in this browser; nothing is uploaded. The edited score stays here until "New scan"; the picture is not kept. Export is MusicXML 3.1 (one part; a grand staff becomes two staves) and MIDI, drawn with Verovio.
Questions and answers
- How should I take the photo?
- Page flat, even light, phone straight above, the whole staff with its clef in the frame. A scan or PDF works best.
- No staff lines were found. What is wrong?
- The staff is too small, skewed or blurred, or several staves sit close together. Crop to one staff, take a sharper picture from closer and try again.
- Does it read piano music with two staves?
- Yes. A treble staff with a bass staff right below it and the same number of bars becomes one piano part, drawn as a grand staff and played together. Scores full of chords and beams still have many errors.