Hi

Looking for software where I can scan Piano Sheet Music and then be able to listen to it.

Thanks
Ron

I tried a few and my conclusion is that none of them are very accurate or convenient to use. I can create the midi file faster by myself, either by playing it into a sequencer slowly one channel at a time (and then quantizing / correcting mistakes), or just hanging the notes on a staff using graphical music construction software.

PDFtoMusicPro can take .pdf files *that were originally created using music construction software*, and accurately convert them back to their source MIDI. But if you're talking about pure Optical Music Recognition from printed sheet music, I don't think the technology is there yet.

Try Smartscore64

https://www.musitek.com/

There is a demo version you can try

I want to say the score reader that's packaged with Sibelius was one of the best that I tested. But it requires a subscription. So I scanned a few scores, but after my project was over I didn't renew. FWIW.

May i ask what your goals are?

In general piano sheet music misses the dynamics a piano player needs to add to make it musical... thats why playing strictly from sheetmusic will never sound as it should sound..

Its at best a way to give you an indication about the piece,,

If you do find a software that meets your needs please report back. I still have an occasional need for it, so I would like to know whether any of them have improved, etc. Thanks!!

The real problem is that sheet music is really only a shorthand. Sure, maybe all the notes are there, but everything to do with feeling is implied. You don’t really ‘read’ sheet music. You ‘interpret’ it.

Remember Stephen Hawking’s voice box? Well, that was a computer trying to sound out the written word. They have got better since he used that (he always refused to update his text-to-speech software, claiming that people were too used to him sounding like that!), but computer interpretation of scanned music is still really in that infancy. Perhaps neural networks and AI can get us closer in the next few years, they are doing amazing things with visual interpretation lately, but music always has been the hardest art to get a computer to fool us it’s real..! 🎹😎

Hi Ron,

I recollect Myriad had some good software for this. Been around for quite some time now.
Check it out : https://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm

Have used their Melody Assistant for Midi Editing and render midi to audio using their gold sound base almost 12 years back and it did a decent job back then.

Cheers,
Jez