To facilitate my dearest hobby, choir and solo singing, I have acquired some excellent tools:
- For converting printed sheet music to MusicXML, MIDI and other computer-readable formats
- For OCR-recognition of the graphical presentation of the score, e.g. scanned scores: Visiv's SharpEye 2 Music Reader
- For reading PDF-files created with any music notation program or other PDF-files, where the music is presented by a collection of simple graphic objects: Myriad's PDFtoMusic
- For editing, printing and listening to music: Myriad's Harmony Assistant Music Notation Software
- For audio recording: Olympus LS-11 audio recorder
- For editing sound files: Audacity audio editor
I have created this page in the hope that I could get in contact and exchange experiences with other music notation software users.
My email address is eino.uikkanen@iki.fi
Visiv's SharpEye 2 Music Reader
Before choosing Visiv's SharpEye 2 I tested several other Music OCR applications including the most popular competitors of SharpEye 2 (e.g. SmartScore, PhotoScore). Unfortunately, I didn't save any test reports, but the overall result was clear: SharpEye 2 was superior to all its competitors - after testing I didn't have to think twice, about which software to buy. Even though my test results are outdated today, I still believe, that SharpEye 2 is the best or one among the best music OCR applications.
Update 13.1.2022: I bought SharpEye2 in 2005. I have used it without problems ever since, but yesterday evening it stopped working - totally. I wrote an error report to Visiv's support. Today afternoon the problem was solved. The reason to the problems was changes in Windows. I got detailed instructions on how to override the problem. Great software, excellent support!
If a PDF-file is created by a music notation program, PDFtoMusic extracts the music-related elements and enables the score to be played, or exported in miscellaneous formats literaly in a couple of minutes. Since the recognition of the musical elements is not based on OCR, the result is virtually error-free if the original PDF-file is error-free.
Myriad's Harmony Assistant Music Notation Software
I use Harmony Assistant for:Olympus LS-11 audio recorder
In addition to these basic tasks, Harmony Assistant has a large number of other capabilities.
- Studying the melodies of the songs
- Using accompaniment as rehearsal accompanist
- Transposing songs
- Creating clear and easy-to-read scores of originally unclear or obscure scores
- Creating views with selected instruments of a large score
I also bought Myriad's Virtual Singer to be used with Harmony Assistant. The latest version of Virtual Singer can sing the lyrics in 28 different languages and with several selectable voices.
If you want the best digital sound quality I also recommend buying Myriad's GOLD Sound database. The Gold Sound Database includes the whole sounds of the General Midi 2 specification and many additional sounds.
If you want to share the music created using Harmony Assistant, you can use many forms of music notation and/or digital sound exports. A quite new very handy way of sharing music is Myriad's Web Export, which offers the possibility to listen to music while showing the play mark in the score. It also offers, according to user's selection, the possibility to download the music in MIDI (MID), MusicXML (XML), Packed MusicXML (MXL) and Myriad's own format (MYR). Here you have an example: Masetto Aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni. The lyrics are sung in Italian by Myriad's Virtual Singer.If you need help, just post your question to Myriad's discussion forum http://www.myriad-online.com/cgi-bin/bbs/YaBB.pl?board=news - either Myriad's people or other users answer you normally without a long delay. There you can also post your own ideas and good practices.
Olympus LS-11 audio recorder is today an obsolete product, but I have used it for several years without problems. Since I am most happy with its audio quality and it seems to be technically robust, I do not need to switch to a newer product. I have saved Olympus LS-11 technical details and Olympus LS-11 user manual on my website.Audacity audio editor
I use Audacity audio editor to edit concert recordings. For me it is very helpful, that I can first collect the concert program (title, artist, composer, start time, end time etc.) in a text file and then use it to extract all performances with a single command to separate audio files.