Sheet Music Scanner

Photograph or scan a printed score and get it back as data — editable MusicXML, playable MIDI, and a rendered view that highlights the notes as it plays.

Photo or PDF inMusicXML + MIDI outMulti-page scoresFree 5/day

What optical music recognition actually does

OMR is OCR's harder cousin. Text runs left to right in one line; music is two-dimensional — pitch is vertical position, duration is notehead shape and stem, and a single symbol's meaning depends on the clef several centimetres to its left and a key signature that may have changed two systems ago.

The pipeline finds staff lines, removes them without destroying the symbols sitting on them, classifies what is left, then reconstructs the musical logic. We run Audiveris — the most capable open-source OMR engine — and add a rescue ladder: if a page comes back empty or short we retry it — auto-detecting and correcting rotation, flattening uneven lighting, straightening bent staff lines, splitting two-up spreads, upscaling small images and re-rasterising PDFs at 300 dpi — which recovers a lot of phone photos that would otherwise fail outright.

Getting a good scan

Recognition quality is decided before you upload. In rough order of impact:

Once it is digital you can transpose it, extract a single part, slow it down for practice, or edit it in MuseScore. Want just the notation file? PDF to MusicXML. Just the playable file? PDF to MIDI.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an app?
No. Photograph the page with whatever camera you have and upload it here — nothing to install, and it runs the same engine on desktop and phone.
Will it read handwritten music?
No. Optical music recognition works on engraved, printed notation. Handwritten manuscript defeats every OMR system currently available, ours included.
Can it handle a whole book?
Multi-page PDFs are processed in one go, with a preview of the first page in about 45 seconds so you can judge the recognition quality before waiting for the rest.
Is it legal to upload sheet music I bought?
Yes. You're processing your own licensed copy for private practice — the same as photocopying it for your stand or playing it into a keyboard. Your files are processed privately, never shared, hosted publicly, or used for anything but your job, and they're cleaned up after a short period. What stays within your license is up to you — MelodyWiz never distributes your music.
Is it free?
Converting and previewing are free — 5 jobs a day, files up to 40 MB, no account. You can play the result in the browser, follow the highlighted score, and solo each part. Downloads are per piece: $2.99 for MusicXML + MIDI, or $5.99 for the full Rehearsal Pack with per-part practice MP3s and slow mixes. One-time payments — no subscription. Doing several pieces? Credit packs save you more: $9 unlocks 4 pieces, $19 unlocks 10.
What happens to my files?
Uploads are used only to run your job and stored briefly so you can download results. We don't share them or train on them. See our privacy policy.

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