How to convert sheet music to MIDI, and check it by ear

To convert sheet music to MIDI, get the notes into a program that understands notation, then export MIDI from it. For a few bars, type them into free notation software such as MuseScore. For whole pages, run a photo or PDF through a music recognition app, listen to what it read, fix the wrong notes, and export. If you already have MusicXML, open it and export MIDI. Whichever route you take, check the file by ear.

A MIDI file is a list of events: which key goes down, when, for how long and how hard, plus a tempo and a time signature. So every conversion does two jobs. Something reads the page into notes, and the notes are written out as events. Writing them out is mechanical; the reading is where mistakes come from, and that's as true of you typing at a keyboard as of a recognition program reading a scan. A wrong note in a MIDI file doesn't look wrong, because it plays in time, and in a piano roll it's harder to spot than on a page.

Know what MIDI leaves out before you start. Fingering, slurs, the spelling of a sharp or flat, and words like "dolce" or "Andante" don't survive. If you'll ever want the printed score again, keep a MusicXML copy next to the MIDI.

Pick the route that fits the music

Choose by how much music there is and what shape it's in.

Before you scan anything, look for a typeset version of the piece. A score someone has already checked starts with fewer mistakes than a fresh scan of an old print.

If what you have is a PDF, check which kind it is. Zoom in on a note: a PDF exported from notation software stays sharp at any size, while a scan or a photo goes grainy. An exported PDF still holds the drawn symbols, so PDFtoMusic, a paid program, can read them directly rather than recognizing a picture. It can't read scans, so for those use music recognition.

Type or play in a short passage yourself

For a few bars, typing is quicker than scanning and proofreading. In MuseScore, start a score with a piano (one instrument on two staves), enter the notes with note input, set the time signature and the tempo, then use File > Export and choose MIDI. A DAW's piano roll or step input works too, if you'd rather not open notation software at all.

Put both hands on the piano's two staves, not on two separate instruments, so the score stays one piano part, as it's printed.

If you can play the music, record it into a DAW from a MIDI keyboard instead. Your phrasing comes through, where a typed part sits on the grid, but so do your slips: quantize gently and check the take against the page.

Scan whole pages with music recognition

Music recognition (often called OMR, optical music recognition) reads a photo or PDF and writes out the notes, usually as MusicXML. A DAW can't do this step: Logic and GarageBand import MIDI, not pictures of notation. The free route uses two programs:

1. Open the PDF or image in Audiveris, a free desktop program for printed music. Let it read the pages, correct what it got wrong in its own window, and export MusicXML.
2. Open the MusicXML in MuseScore and play it back with the page beside you, fixing what you hear (the checklist below).
3. Set the tempo, then use File > Export and choose MIDI.

In MuseScore 4, File > Import PDF hands step 1 to an online import page on musescore.com. That service runs Audiveris too, without the correction window, so you fix everything in MuseScore afterward. Paid scanner apps do the same job; the guide to sheet music scanners for piano compares them.

Start from the cleanest source you have:

• A clean PDF from a publisher or a public-domain archive reads better than a photo of a printed page.
• Photograph one page per picture, flat, sharp and evenly lit, with the whole page in frame.
• Printed music reads better than handwriting. Audiveris doesn't support handwritten manuscripts.

Check the file by ear before you build on it

Play the reading with the original page in front of you, slower if you need to, and listen for these faults:

• A misread key signature or accidental, where one missing sharp can put the same wrong note in every bar of a section.
• Notes far above or below the staff, since ledger lines are easy to miscount, for a program and for a person typing. A piano notes chart shows which note each ledger line is.
• A bar that's a beat too long or too short. Everything after it is shifted against the bar lines, which you hear straight away in a DAW with a click.
• Repeats and endings that don't play in the order the page intends.
• Ties read as repeated notes, which turn a held note into two strikes.
• Triplets and grace notes, dropped or read as ordinary notes.
• The wrong speed. If the score has no metronome mark, the MIDI usually plays at 120 beats per minute, the MIDI default, whatever the tempo word says. Set the tempo in the score before you export.

Fix mistakes in the score, not in the MIDI file. If you correct the notation and export again, your MIDI and your MusicXML stay the same music. Edit the MIDI directly and the two drift apart.

Know what MIDI keeps and what it drops

MIDI carries pitches, rhythms, note lengths, how hard each note is struck, the sustain pedal, the tempo and the time signature. It doesn't carry fingering, slurs as markings, beaming, the difference between F sharp and G flat, or page layout, and words like "dolce" survive at most as plain text labels that nothing plays. Staves don't exist in MIDI; the most a file can do is put each hand on its own track. A tempo word becomes a number of beats per minute, or nothing at all.

Nor does a MIDI file hold any sound. Whatever plays it picks the instrument, so the same file can sound like a grand piano in one program and a thin keyboard tone in another. In a DAW, put the tracks on a piano instrument and check that the project tempo matches the file, since not every DAW takes the tempo from an imported file.

Exported from a score, the file also sounds stiff. Every note sits exactly on the grid at a loudness set by the dynamic marks, and the pedal is there only if the score marked it and the reading kept the marks. For a production, draw in the pedal and humanize the timing in the DAW, or play the part in yourself.

In the site's worked MIDI handoff, a Schumann piece went from a PDF into an LMMS session without its fingerings or the French tempo word "pas vite". Both were printed on the page; MIDI has no event for either. Keep the MusicXML from the same checked score for when you need notation again.

Doing this in PlayableNotes

PlayableNotes reads piano music: a treble and a bass staff together. Upload a photo (one page per photo; on a phone there's a "Take a photo" button), a screenshot, a PDF or a MusicXML file. You see the pages in order and the credit count before anything is read, and reading takes a minute or two.

Then you check it by ear. The score plays on a sampled piano with the notes highlighted as they sound, at any tempo, with a loop for a passage and each hand on its own. If a note is wrong, click it and fix it in the measure editor, describe the fix to the AI chat, or read that line again from a sharper photo. When it sounds right, download MIDI, with the right and left hands on separate tracks. The same score downloads as MusicXML and PDF too, so the files stay in step.

Before you export, you can ask for another key or an easier left hand; each result is saved as its own version. The sheet music to MIDI page walks through the export.

Reading costs 1 credit per line of music, where a line is the treble and bass staff together. A page of piano music is usually 5 to 7 lines. New accounts get 50 free credits, and a reading that fails costs nothing. Packs are on the pricing page.

Everything after the reading is free: playing, editing, and the MIDI, MusicXML and PDF downloads. Importing MusicXML you already have is free too, and so are the public-domain pieces in the library, which you can open and download without reading anything.

PlayableNotes stops at piano music. It won't read guitar tab, vocal parts, band or orchestral scores, or handwritten manuscripts, and it can't turn a recording into notes. No reading is guaranteed to be perfect, so listen before you build on the file.