Questions & Answers

Add possibility to scan pdf or pictures of music sheet and convert to editable sheet

+20 votes
1,603 views
asked Sep 16, 2020 in Notion iOS Feature Requests by micheleraucci (330 points)
I would like you to add the function, as it is already working in other ios apps, to import pdf or jpgs and transform them in editable music sheets.

2 Answers

+1 vote
answered Oct 26, 2021 by waynerose1 (3,780 points)
I'm curious. What other iOS apps have the capability to turn a pdf score into an editable version of the same score?

I use an application called SmartScore on Mac to do this very thing. And it does it very well, enabling you to edit, play, print and export your score in various formats, including Music XML which can then be imported into any notation software, if desired.

It's an extremely complex process, and even SmartScore does it with only 99% accuracy, so there's always some editing to do after the conversion from pdf.

There are other applications that do this, but after considerable research, I believe SmartScore 64 does the best job.

I'm not aware of any apps that do this on iPad. Any scoring software can play a file in its own format as midi. That's what Notion does. I don't know of any software that can do that from a pdf. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.
+1 vote
answered Dec 26, 2021 by kathleenmacconaill (160 points)
Re. waynerose1's answer: There is an application for the iPad called Sheet Music Scanner by David Zemsky (CAD$5.49) that can scan a partition and play it. You can also inport an image file (jpg, png) or a PDF. The application can export to several formats, inlcuding Music XML. For scanning, I find the best way to use it is to actually scan my partition using Notes and import it into Sheet Music Scanner, then export to music XML and edit it in Notion for iOS (there's always some clean-up needed, but it beats entering the partition from scratch.
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