Scanning an original mint condition piano part after multiple attempts to do so has yielded no results. I purchased Finale PrintMusic 2011 from Amazon which comes with a demo version of Smart Score Lite 6. It certainly meets my key signature transposition requirements perfectly.Īs a music educator working in a public school, this software can be a powerful tool in theory, But in practice it does not work. I would like to supplement this review later on when I have more experience with the software. If you are planning to compose you should probably come to this program with an understanding of the basics of musical notation. In addition to copying and transposing and recording you can compose music or modify music if you are a serious musician. It appears this software has been refined over the years. When you stop to think of it, that is quite an accomplishment considering what is out there. This is not PhotoShop! It comes with a PDF manual of 200 plus pages written in plain English in logical order. I actually got my first results without reading anything, but I wouldn't try to go too far that way :) The learning curve is not steep. I would say this software is fairly intuitive.

I have been using an OCR (Optical Character Reader) program a couple hours per week for years and I know how important a good scanner is!

The Musitek people consider a good scanner to be essential and even offer a bundle of the SmartScore software with Canon, Epson,or Brother scanners to make sure the customer gets good results. My scanner is a 9 year old Epson Perfection 1650 but it does a good job with this software.

I also think the scanner used is important. Then when you run the recognition you should have few problems. After you scan and before you run the recognition software, you can correct the scanned copy and make sure all the notes are easy to read, etc. When it sees 'rit.' it knows that stands for 'ritardando' and slows down the music! I also noticed one nice feature I haven't tried yet. It even recognizes written musical instructions in the score. This program does a lot more than scan and modify sheet music but I haven't had a chance yet to explore its other features, which include creating sound files from sheet music. Now after a few adjustments my music is printed off in the key of C Maj and is ready to use! You can play the whole piece through or just one or a few measures that you are working on. Of course the program plays the music for you with a decent synthesized piano sound and you can change the instrumentation and tempo. I also found several places where there were misspellings in the lyrics and fixed them. When I looked carefully at the recognized results on the screen I found a place where a note had been missed by the scanner and so I inserted it. The trial version won't let you print anything so after I purchased the full version I scanned the same song again so I could change keys and print it. Just amazing! All the notes moved down and the relationships of the notes were perfectly preserved- including sharps and flats. Then I lowered it to C Maj -so I could sing it- with the push of a virtual slide switch. I scanned a song written in the key of E flat and then ran the recognition application. I downloaded the free trial Song Book version and decided to buy it after playing around with it for an hour or so. If I were an accomplished pianist I could transpose at the keyboard but I cannot do that :) I have a light bass-baritone voice and a number of the songs I want to sing are written for the tenor voice, so I need to change the key signatures of the piano accompaniments in the sheet music. Would I recommend their product to others? Not at this time! That solved nothing! Although I have sent more emails, I no longer get any response from them!ĭoes the software work? Yes, if you are careful with your scans. I received a one line response suggesting I download the software again and reinstall. Then it would do nothing! Zip! Nada! Nothing at all! I emailed and outlined my problem. It would request my Customer ID and Serial Number which I entered. My problem with this company is their tech support or should I say LACK of tech support. There are always edits to do afterwards but they were of a reasonable number. Recognition worked, most times, if I was careful to use a clean copy of the music and set up my scanner properly. The learning curve is also pretty steep but I am a music teacher with a good knowledge of computers. The price was steep but it did do what it was supposed to do. I purchased SmartScore X Pro Edition SmartScore X2 Pro Edition (this link is their new and improved version worth another $100 bucks if you were to upgrade!) about a year and a half ago.

Smartscore x2 pro edition review