The original version of this page can be found at : http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=454731
| Posted By : Ed Cupman - 6/5/2015 12:18 PM | I've been using Finale almost every day now for 15 years. Over the course of that time I've made a few stabs at trying to scan music into a Finale document. Every time I've tried, the results were so bad that I would end up programing the music in myself. Eventually, I just gave up on scanning altogether.
So my question is, does anyone know of a step-by-step approach to scanning music into Finale? A sure-fire way, that has worked for them, that will, without too many headaches, get a typical piece of sheet music into a Finale document?
Thanks, Ed
Finale 2014D;
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
Yosemite |
| Posted By : Charles Lawrence - 6/5/2015 1:27 PM | | There have literally been thousands of threads on this subject. Use your browser search engine and search for something like this, sans quotes, "site:forum.makemusic.com scanning".
If I were going to try scanning, I would use Sharpeye, no longer being supported, but still available, AFAIK. http://www.visiv.co.uk/ It produces a MusicXML 2.0/2.1 file that can be imported into Finale. Provided the original document to be interpreted is clean and not too complicated, Sharpeye does a pretty good job, though no music recognition algorithm is going to produce perfect results. Editing, usually extensive, will be necessary. Mileage varies, so you just have to try it and see what you get.
There used to be a tutorial presented by an MM representative that gave a step-by-step approach to using the Smartscore Lite program bundled in Finale, but I cannot find it anymore in the video library, http://www.finalemusic.com/support/learning-center/video-library/
You might find this link helpful, http://tomrudolph.berkleemusicblogs.com/2008/04/18/let%e2%80%99s-talk-scanning-and-music-notation/
BTW, Sharpeye does not support MusicXML 2.0/2.1. My error, sorry. It only supports MusicXML 1.0/1.1.
"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!"
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5930K CPU with 6 dual core processors @ 3.50 GHz (12 threads)
32 GB RAM
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU with 4GB ram
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Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional with Media Center x64 Edition, (06.03.9600.00)
Finale versions: 2011b.r2, 2012c.r13, 2014d.v5030
GPO4.02
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"There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big." – John Maxwell
Post Edited (Charles Lawrence) : 6/7/2015 4:32:32 PM (GMT-5) |
| Posted By : Mike Rosen - 6/5/2015 1:39 PM | There is a current scanning thread on the Windows side. Take a look at it.
Ed, I've sent you a PM.
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org
Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finale-tips-and-tricks/index.html
Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014d, on Yosemite 10.10.3
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard, numberpad. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." |
| Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 6/5/2015 1:45 PM | Ed Cupman said...
Eventually, I just gave up on scanning altogether.
Does anyone know of a step-by-step approach to scanning music into Finale?
1. Give up on scanning altogether.
2. Enter the music in Finale.
"This is me helping."
Finale 2014d, 2012 MacMini; 2012 MacBook Pro (10.10.3)
Edirol FA-66; Roland A-49, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.uk |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/5/2015 2:37 PM | Dear Ed,
Success with scanning depends largely on what you are trying to scan.
The following assumes that you are:
a. using the full version of SmartScore (in my case SmartScore Pro X)
b. trying to scan relatively non-complex music that is clearly engraved. My most successful experiences have been with single-staffed instrumental parts.
Here is what I do:
1. Scan your music and save each page as a tiff file (You might need to experiment with the resolution. I used 400 dpi in the example below.)
2. open the tiff file(s) in SmartScore File>open
3. Use the File>Recognize function in SmartScore and your optically recognized scan will come up in the window along with the original scan.
4. Save the File in SmartScore as an MusicXML file
5. Look over the optically recognized scan and correct any bar line or meter errors (these do not translate well when bringing into Finale) Save the changes.
6. Import the MusicXML file into Finale 2014d Finale 2014d>File>Import>MusicXML
7. Your music will come up immediately in Finale 2014d
8. Proofread the result against the original and edit with Finale 2014d
After several months of not dealing with scanning, it just took me a minute or so to input into Finale 2014d the first page of the violin part of Bach's Violin Sonata BWV 1016, a rather complex part rhythmically. There were no bar line or meter problems at the optical recognition stage. The only errors in the Finale output were a couple of easily-corrected beaming issues, missing trill symbols, and a superfluous dot; otherwise the result was perfect. Net savings: many, many minutes of my life.
Happy scanning!
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014 (Finale 2011 as a backup) GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Dave Lang - 6/7/2015 12:35 AM | I'm with Wiggy on this one. In my experience (which of course may not be the same as another person's) it's been faster and easier to just input the music manually.
Cause the OCR is so bad that you spend more time proof reading, reformatting, and repairing what you get than you would spend just doing it yourself.
MacBook Pro Retina 15" (late 2013), Finale 2011c, 2012c, 2014d badly needs some bug fixes |
| Posted By : Mike Rosen - 6/7/2015 10:47 AM | Feel free to believe that. This is the same sort of argument as Simple vs. Speedy, or Finale vs. Sibelius.
There is no definite, final answer that will be true in all cases, just, whatever works for you.
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org
Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finale-tips-and-tricks/index.html
Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014d, on Yosemite 10.10.3
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard, numberpad. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/7/2015 1:14 PM | Hi, Dave.
It's like what was said. It depends on what you are scanning. If it is a single-line instrumental part of not great complexity, it is probably better to scan it. You'll save time.
I am attaching three examples. (I am not a power user of SmartScore and just use it on occasions when it saves me time. So please forgive me, SmartScore experts if these are not a good representation. Maybe others would attach better examples of what can be done.)
The Bach and Beethoven examples received no editing in SmartScore or Finale. The Brahms received two bar line edits in SmartScore and one in Finale. They took seconds to produce. I estimate proofreading and cleanup to vary from a minute to five minutes. Some might equal this in Hyperscribe, but I could not, even though I am a keyboard player.
So I guess the question is, would one want to start with a blank page or start with this. It is matter of preference.
One should also take into account that multiple pages are as easy to produce as one, especially if one is working from a preexisting PDF. So the entire work, or many such works can be produced in seconds. That is not the case for proofreading and cleanup, of course, which will vary depending on the complexity of the music. In many cases, Finale input will be required in whole measures or more. But that would be the case for the entire work if scanning were not involved.
I would attach more impressive examples, but unfortunately the results are best when working from the clean, very well engraved Urtext editions that are under copyright protection, and I don't want to risk it.
One can see in the Beethoven example that SmartScore sometimes runs into real issues with tuplets, knowing their extent and mistaking fingerings for tuplet signs. On the other hand, I am using an older version of SmartScore. Maybe this has improved.
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Mike Rosen - 6/7/2015 1:52 PM | Regarding triplets: my experience has been that if it gets one or two of them right, it will get them all right. And if the first two are wrong, they are all wrong!
However... To correct the missed tuplets, all you do is select the triplet tool, and drag over the group of notes. Done. And after you've done a couple of them, the program asks if you want it to correct all similar situations. Now, I'm not saying that this will work this easily for mixed or complex tuplets, but for the basic ones, that's good enough for me.
Another weakness I've found is when the number of staves changes from system to system. Then, SSP will often assign the notes to the wrong staves. This is correctable, but it can be hard to learn the system, as it isn't very intuitive.
Probably the biggest weakness is missed notes or incorrect durations. However, when you bring the score into SmartScore to edit, you get a stacked view, with the imported view above, and the scanned view, below. And measures with incorrect durations are highlighted. So it's easy to look at the measure and see what's wrong with it. And it's easy to correct.
Of course there are mistakes. Missed accidentals, the occasional wrong note... But, no more than I would make on my own initial entry.
I have successfully scanned, edited, exported, imported, and proofread, 10 and 12 page 4-part choral with piano scores, in a lot less time than they would have taken me in Simple.
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org
Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finale-tips-and-tricks/index.html
Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014d, on Yosemite 10.10.3
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard, numberpad. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker."Post Edited (Mike Rosen) : 6/7/2015 2:01:47 PM (GMT-5) |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/7/2015 3:47 PM | Sounds like I had better look more deeply into those SmartScore editing tools, Mike! Thanks.
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Dave Lang - 6/8/2015 1:38 AM | Hey John - just for fun - could you post the original of the Bach piece so we can proof what the scan did? Are you sure it would only take you 5 minutes to fix it?
MacBook Pro Retina 15" (late 2013), Finale 2011c, 2012c, 2014d badly needs some bug fixesPost Edited (Dave Lang) : 6/8/2015 4:29:11 AM (GMT-5) |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/8/2015 8:28 AM | Hi Dave, Here it is. I am glad that I posted an OCR of a public domain edition! The fingerings and other markings added by an editor are often roadblocks to good OCR, with SmartScore so Urtext editions are best. I would proofread against the original manuscript to make my corrections. It is available at imslp.org/. I would not include the editorial markings, so this would save me a little time. The Beethoven (Schenker edition) and Brahms (Original edition) are also available at IMSLP if you want to compare those as well.
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Mike Rosen - 6/8/2015 9:30 AM | When I do the scan recognition, I turn off the option to recognize text. This eliminates a lot of those editorial marks and fingerings.
I ran the Bach though SmartScore. There were no incorrect notes, except for one missing natural. I had to correct a few spots where the 16th notes were picked up as 8ths.
Total time to get it into Finale, less than 5 minutes. It still needs some editing, but here it is in rough import.
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org
Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finale-tips-and-tricks/index.html
Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014d, on Yosemite 10.10.3
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard, numberpad. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/8/2015 10:20 AM | Thanks for doing that, Mike. Either the SmartScore Pro X2 is improved over the version I am using, or you are a lot better at this than I am. Probably a bit of both.
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Charles Lawrence - 6/8/2015 10:58 AM | I tried Mike's experiment except with Sharpeye.
First of all, Sharpeye cannot open PDF files, so I had to convert the PDF to an uncompressed TIF file. Sharpeye will not read compressed TIF files, so be aware of that caveat.
Sharpeye read the file with only 3 measures with rhythm issues, and no incorrect notes, AFAICT. I corrected those using the Sharpeye editor, rather cumbersome for a Finale user, but doable.
I saved as an MusicXML file and imported into Finale.
Attached is the unedited MUSX file for comparison with Mile's effort. There are still a few edits that need to be made in order to get the exact original, but they are easy to do within Finale.
"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!"
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5930K CPU with 6 dual core processors @ 3.50 GHz (12 threads)
32 GB RAM
Realtek High Definition on board audio
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU with 4GB ram
512 GB SSD system disk
Four 4TB and one 1TB internal SATA HD's
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional with Media Center x64 Edition, (06.03.9600.00)
Finale versions: 2011b.r2, 2012c.r13, 2014d.v5030
GPO4.02
Cakewalk SONAR X3
"There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big." – John Maxwell
|
| Posted By : John Iafrate - 6/16/2015 1:06 AM | I have both SmartScore ProX2 and PhotoScore Ultimate. Sometimes, one is better than the other. I like having choices. I think editing is easier in PhotoScore Ultimate.
Just my 2 cents.
John
**********
Finale 2011c, 2012c
Mac Pro 3.2 - 16GB(Ram) OSX 10.8.5, 10.9 |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/16/2015 12:05 PM | John, I did a bit of experimenting with the PhotoScore demo and SmartScore ProX (I can't use the X2 demo) and came to the exactly the same conclusions. Serious "scanners" could profitably use both programs simultaneously, because they often cancel out each other's errors. I could envision having two Finale files open, one with the SmartScore OCR and the other with the PhotoScore OCR and copying and pasting the best results into a third Finale file. Two or three monitors would help!
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
| Posted By : Charles Lawrence - 6/16/2015 12:31 PM | | Neuratron just announced an update to PhotoScore Ultimate 8.0.1 and also their other product AudioScore Ultimate 8. (updates are $99 USD + $50 USD, or free if full product purchased after 4/11/15)
"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!"
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5930K CPU with 6 dual core processors @ 3.50 GHz (12 threads)
32 GB RAM
Realtek High Definition on board audio
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU with 4GB ram
512 GB SSD system disk
Four 4TB and one 1TB internal SATA HD's
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional with Media Center x64 Edition, (06.03.9600.00)
Finale versions: 2011b.r2, 2012c.r13, 2014d.v5030
GPO4.02
Cakewalk SONAR X3
"There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big." – John Maxwell
|
| Posted By : Dave Lang - 6/16/2015 11:33 PM | whoops I just realized I didn't thank John for posting the originals - thanks!
but I decided to bow out of the discussion since I think it really comes down to how you want to work
I have my own reasons to not scan, but that doesn't mean nobody should!
cheers,
dave
MacBook Pro Retina 15" (late 2013), Finale 2011c, 2012c, 2014d badly needs some bug fixes |
| Posted By : John Ruggero - 6/17/2015 6:36 AM | You are welcome, Dave!
Mac mini (OS 10.8.5) with dual monitors
Finale 2014d (Finale 2011 as a backup) with GPO 4
Kurzweil Mark 5 with M-Audio Midisport 2 x 2
Adobe InDesign CS4, Acrobat XI Pro, Photoshop Elements 11
SmartScore X Pro
JW Plug-ins
Audacity 2.0.5
www.cantilenapress.com |
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