Disklavier

Buffy,

I am presently using Sibelius 2.1 and its associated scanning program 
called Photoscore Professional.  I am using an Epson 2450 Photo scanner. 
  This is a standard flatbed scanner that can also be adapted for 
scanning slides and color negatives.  Of course for music scanning, I 
use it as a straightforward flatbed scanner.  My computer is a P4 1.8 
GHZ with 1 GB of RAM running Windows 2000 Professional.  I find 
Photoscore's scanning accuracy is very very good as long as the music 
that you are scanning is clear and well defined, i.e. the case for 
virtually all standard published music.  (I recently scanned in a six 
page score of advanced piano music without a single note error using 
Photoscore Professional 2.1!) Photoscore (nor any other music scanning 
program that I know of) will not handle handwritten or smudged and 
poorly printed music very well at all.   Photoscore places little red 
note symbols above each measure of the score after reading it to show 
you errors that have occurred in terms of the time signature.  Clicking 
on a single button in Photoscore imports the scanned score directly into 
Sibelius 2.1 for further editing.  

I do not attempt to correct all of the errors that are shown in 
Photoscore after it reads a scan.  For example, pickup measures are 
shown as error's after a Photoscore scan, but are best corrected in 
Sibelius rather than correcting them in Photoscore since Sibelius 
requires that a measure which does not have the correct number of beats 
defined by the time signature be created as an "irregular" measure 
within the Sibelius program.  I often do not correct voicing errors in 
Photoscore because they are easier to correct after getting the score in 
Sibelius.  Finally, I use Sibelius for adding any musical expressions 
not immediately recognized by Photoscore.

Be prepared to spend some time in Sibelius after transferring the 
scanned and read file from Photoscore.  This is not only to correct 
errors that were not caught in Photoscore but also to add musical 
expressions many of which are not recognized or interpreted in playback 
correctly by Photoscore.  For example, even though the six pages of 
music that I referred to above were scanned in without note errors, I 
spent about 2 hours after tranferring the file into Sibelius in order to 
add the musical expressions in the score, implement them proeprly in 
playback, and format the score properly.  Thus my total time to scan in 
the score, correct all errors, add all dynamics and other musical 
expressions, and prepare the midi file for playback on my disklavier was 
about 3 hrs for this piece of music.  (I might add that at my skill 
level I have had to work on this piece of music for four weeks at one 
hour per day in order to play it reasonably well.)

Sibelius has some very nice playback features including artificial 
intelligence algorithms for adding rubato and phrasing to the playback. 
 This is retained in the midi file during playback on your disklavier or 
your computer sound card.  

Scanning in sheet music is expensive (in terms of both software costs 
and time to complete the score to one's satisfaction).  However, it is a 
technological marvel to me that this is possible at all considering the 
incredible complexity of musical notation.  By the time I have scanned 
in and corrected a piece for good playback on my disklavier using 
Sibelius and Photoscore, I am in a much better position to understand 
the music's structure and proceed to learn the piece.  

If your piano skills are good, then music scanning is undoubtedly more 
trouble and expense than it is worth with the present state of the 
technology.  However, if you are learning and your skills are not equal 
to the task of real time playback of sheet music that you are interested 
in, then scanning is a much faster way of entering the music into the 
computer than any other method of which I am aware.  

I am not sure if I really answered your question.  If not, please feel 
free to contact me privately by e-mail, and I'll try again.

Tom

buffy@... wrote:

> Tom, 
>  
> I gave up on photoscore cause it took longer to revise the errors.  
> I'm using xp and hp scan jet 6300c.  What are you using.  I get so 
> frustrated that I find it is not worth the time.
>  
> Am I doing something wrong?
>  
> Buffy
>