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Sheet Music to MIDI
Hand it a printed score and get a MIDI file you can play. Optical music recognition reads the notes off a PDF or scan and turns them into editable MIDI: no manual note entry, no re-typing a page you already have on paper.
Turn printed music into playable files.
Upload a PDF or image. Optical music recognition reads the score and returns editable music data.
Convert Sheet to MIDIStep by step
- Upload the score
PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF or BMP up to 50 MB. A clean, high-contrast page reads best.
- Let OMR read it
The engine detects the staves and symbols and decodes the notes and rhythms.
- Check it, then export MIDI
Play it back against the page, fix any misreads, and save the .mid file.
How optical music recognition reads a page
Optical music recognition, or OMR, is the musical cousin of OCR. Where OCR turns pictures of letters into text, OMR turns pictures of notation into notes. It is a harder problem, because music is two-dimensional: pitch is encoded by vertical position on the staff, rhythm by horizontal spacing and note-head shape, and a single symbol's meaning depends on the clef, the key signature and the accidentals earlier in the bar.
The engine works in stages. It finds the staves, detects and removes the staff lines, locates note-heads, stems, beams, rests and accidentals, then interprets each symbol in context to recover the actual pitch and duration. Those decoded notes are written out as MIDI, which you can play back immediately to hear whether the reading matches the page.
Because it is reading an image, input quality is everything. A born-digital PDF or a clean, straight, high-contrast scan gives the engine sharp symbols to work with. A skewed phone photo with shadows and low contrast forces it to guess, and guesses become misreads.
What it is good for
- Playback and proofing: hear a score you cannot yet play, to check your own arrangement or a student's.
- DAW input: bring a written part into a session without keying every note by hand.
- Practice tracks: generate a MIDI reference from a lead sheet or exercise book.
- Archiving: turn a paper library into editable files you can transpose and reuse.
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Frequently asked questions
What file formats and sizes can I upload?
PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF and BMP, up to 50MB. A crisp, high-contrast scan or a born-digital PDF reads far more accurately than a phone photo taken at an angle.
How accurate is optical music recognition?
OMR is strong on clean, engraved scores and weaker on handwritten manuscript, faded photocopies or dense orchestral pages. It reads the notes and rhythms well; expect to correct the occasional misread accidental, tie or voice before the MIDI is perfect.
Can it read handwritten music?
Handwriting is the hardest case for OMR because every hand is different. It may catch some of it, but a printed, engraved score gives dramatically better results.
What can I do with the MIDI afterwards?
Play it back to check the reading, load it into a DAW, reassign instruments, or open it in an editor to correct notes and re-export. It becomes ordinary MIDI you can use anywhere.