SmartScore Music-to-XML Music Notation Recognition for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By Steve Bloch

  First attempt: some glitches but usable

  I just downloaded this because my old version of Finale -- which I was keeping around in addition to an up-to-date version because it supports scanning -- will no longer run on PC Catalina. As a first test, I asked SmartScore to read a PDF score I had previously generated in Finale (so it's utterly clean and modern, a "best case" test). As other reviewers have pointed out, the "export to Finale" button doesn't actually work -- you have to export to MusicXML and then import the MusicXML into Finale -- which is a minor annoyance. SmartScore misread the 9/8 time signature as C, but most of the measures show up in Finale as "9/8 but use C for display", which is easily fixed (much easier than if it had actually tried to force the notes into 4/4). All the notes seem to be correct, and most of the lyrics, but there's an empty measure and a double-bar inserted at the beginning of almost every system. Again, easily fixed in Finale, but why is it doing this?

  
  
• By e n f

  It tries, but it really doesn

  It makes a sincere attempt at turning printed music into MusicXML, but the results are pretty bad. Even when it gets it mostly right, there is still some sort of error in every measure. It is fast, but I'd prefer if it spent more time and did a better job. The user interface is very minimal: just a couple of dialog boxes.

  
  
• By Jay_in_Mass

  Surprisingly effective

  I was worried, based on some of the reviews, that I might be wasting my money with this. But I was pleasantly surprised. The first PDF I imported was a moderately complicated choral work. SmartScore did an impressive job translating it. A lot of data, such as rehearsal marks and dynamics, imported perfectly. Tempo was pretty good, though not perfect. When I brought the XML into Finale, every part came up as a piano part. But that was simple to fix. There are really no controls or setting to SmartScore's interface; just an import button. It would be nice if some settings could be tweaked before it exported the XML. But overall, I'm happy with this app. It's going to save me a lot of time I would have to spend re-writing scores I had composed in other software of which I now have only PDFs.

  
  
• By MsTiffK

  Best $100 I have ever spent on software!

  I was really skeptical of this software as I previously owned an early edition of Photoscore that never seemed userfriendly and had a steep learning curve. I open the exact same PDF in SmartScore and Photoscore and SmartScore really nailed the score recognition, the lyrics, the chords and ALL of the text! I’m seriously blown away. As a musician and music teacher I am simply blown away. I also thought that it may be sticky using this software alongside Sibelius but the file opened with ease and without errors.

  
  
• By Billupieno

  Watch your fonts

  This product cannot translate the standard jazz font used in jazz arrangements. We have had few problems with standard music fonts that are used in classical music, but all of our jazz charts purchased from J.W. Pepper that use the standard jazz font/style are incomprehensible when translated from a digitally-saved PDFs. Of course Itunes will not refund for any reason, so we are out $99 with a program that does not serve our needs and has no documentation that it will not work for these fonts.

  
  

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