Disklavier

----- Original Message -----

From: Tom Wheeler

To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 5:29 PM

Subject: Re: [disklavier] Re: using a scanner

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

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