PDF to MusicXML Conversion 2026 options

Dorico
1

Hi, I am a Cubase/Nuendo user and currently working on a library of about 29 compositions written for jass string quartet with rhythm section. The charts were done in early (Erato, 80’s) notation/engraving software but I am considering Dorico Pro, however I would like to know the best option (today) for PDF conversion to MusicXML so I can import to Dorico and update the look and overall readability of these charts and generate more complete master scores. I have seen various posts on this topic but nothing really current. ScanScore3 looks interesting but I am sure many of you have tried this and others, so I would value your thoughts. Thank you.

2

If I understand you correctly, you have 29 compositions that have been “printed” to PDF form early notation software - right?

You are not talking about scannings of printed pages - right?

Consider PDFtoMusic Pro, created by Didier and Olivier Guillion and their colleagues at Myriad.

With PDF files printed from notation programs PDFtoMusic Pro will work better than optical scanning programs. This is because PDFtoMusic Pro knows things that an OCR program can’t know.
For instance, PDFtoMusic Pro knows

  • that staff lines really are drawn as lines,
  • that a notehead is a musical font character, rather than trying to determine a notehead from a bunch of dark pixels on a page.

The flip side is that PDFtoMusic Pro cannot handle optical scans from a scanner at all.

3

Peter, thanks so much. Yes the immediate project is in PDF format already.

This is very useful information so I will check out PDFtoMusic Pro and let you know how it goes. If you have any thoughts on scanning utilities, I would be interested in hearing about that as well …thanks so much.

Dan Palmer

4

I use PlayScore2 on iPhone and iPad.
The results of .pdf notation files are very good, I would say; it mostly gets 95% right.
I export to music.xml to a location on iCloud, so I’ll do the importing into Dorico Pro on my desktop computer.
I have been using PDF2Music, but since the above software is working so well, it’s in a winter sleep at the moment.

5

I get really good results with soundslice. Sometimes it helps to run the xml through musescore before opening in Dorico.

6

Here’s a (somewhat) recent article discussing several different options for processing scanning PDFs.

This doesn’t include PDFtoMusic Pro (which I’m not familiar with), since, as @PeterThomsen notes, it only handles PDF files produced directly from notation software, not scanning of PDFs on paper.

7

thanks k_b. I will check this out.

dp

8

Thanks for the info re soundslice, noted. I will check it out. I have heard others using musescore as well so another tool to research.

dp

9

Thanks so much. I did see this review online as well and it is helpful. Seems that all of them do “some things” well so I will check them out more closely. Much appreciated.

dp