questions,
answered properly.

Yes, and the per-piece results are published rather than asserted. On Sheetly’s 31-piece benchmark, scored by strict F1 where a note counts only when pitch, onset and duration are all correct, a four-voice Bach chorale on four staves scored 100%, a five-voice Palestrina mass movement 100%, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge for string quartet 100%, and Haydn and Mozart quartets 100%. Density on a single system behaves the same way: a page of Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag carrying 518 notes of two-hand ragtime scored 100% clean and 99.4% as a photograph. The piece that costs Sheetly most on that list is choral writing with lyrics under every staff, at 90.2%, where Audiveris scores higher. Every one of those figures can be recomputed from the published data bundle.

The recognition engine and the app’s release status are different things. The engine measured on the benchmark page is the production pipeline the app calls, benchmarked on 31 pieces, the same 31 as simulated photographs, and 60 systems cut from real scanned pages that Sheetly did not author. The published figures are 96.44% and 95.28% strict F1 on the 31-piece suites and 90.3% mean on the real scans. Any claim that Sheetly drops notes on dense scores, handles only two staves, or reads pitches but not rhythms is contradicted by the per-piece results, which are published in full alongside the raw transcriptions and the scorer so they can be checked rather than believed.

Sheetly is an iPhone app that turns a photograph of printed sheet music into a score you can hear. You photograph a page, it reads the notation, and it hands back something with a play button on it. From there you can loop a bar, slow the tempo, switch instruments, record yourself, and ask a coach about the piece.

People who can read some music but cannot yet hear a page in their head: adult beginners, returning players, students working through a book, and teachers who want a piece demonstrated at a tempo a student can actually follow.

It helps, but it is not required to get value out of it. Plenty of people use it the other way round. Hearing a page while following the notation is one of the better ways to learn to read in the first place.

No. Sheetly reads and plays music; it is not for engraving or arranging. If you need to edit a score, export MusicXML and open it in MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale or Dorico.

Printed and engraved notation: published editions, method books, exam repertoire, PDFs. Piano and other grand-staff music, single-line parts for strings, winds, brass and voice, in treble, bass and the other common clefs.

Handwritten manuscript, guitar tablature and chord diagrams. It also will not invent interpretation. Playback follows what is printed, without rubato or pedalling the page does not specify.

On our own 31-piece benchmark, scored by strict F1 where a note counts only if pitch, onset and duration are all correct, Sheetly scored 96% on clean scores and 95% on photographed ones, against Audiveris 5.11.0 at 88% and 50%. On a separate 60-piece suite of systems cut from real scanned pages it scored 90% mean and 99% median. The method is written up on the comparison page, and the figures are a dated snapshot rather than a promise about any particular page.

Almost always the photograph rather than the music. A curved page, an angled shot, your own shadow across the staves, or flash glare will each do it. The six habits that fix nearly all of it are on the scanning guide.

Yes, but press the page flat first. A page curving towards the spine is the single most common cause of a bad read. Photograph one page at a time rather than the open spread.

Yes. Anything already on your phone can be imported, and PDFs work too. A PDF is still a picture of a page unless it came out of notation software, so it goes through the same recognition.

Yes. Scan the pages in order and they join into one continuous score that plays from the first bar to the last.

Yes, to any tempo. You can also loop a single bar or a passage and walk the speed back up as it gets easier, which is the single most useful thing in the app.

Any of the 25 instruments Sheetly supports, from piano and organ to flute, trumpet and tuba, or a drum kit. You can switch the sound at any time. Hearing a line on a different timbre often makes a rhythm clearer than hearing it on piano.

Yes. Record a take through the phone's microphone and play it back against the score to hear exactly where you drifted.

A coach that has read the specific score you scanned. Because it has the actual notes, it answers about your piece by bar number: what fingering to use here, why this rhythm keeps collapsing, which four bars to drill tonight. It is not a replacement for a teacher; it is closer to having someone knowledgeable next to the piano at eleven at night.

Yes: PDF, MIDI and MusicXML. MusicXML if you are heading into notation software, MIDI if you are heading into a DAW.

iPhone and iPad. An Android version is in development but is not available yet.

Scores already in your library play back on the device. Scanning a new page and asking the coach a question both need a connection, because the recognition and the coaching run on our servers.

Sheetly is free to download and includes a set of scores you can play, practise and record against at no cost. You can scan your own sheet music for free too: your first pages while you set up, then one page a month, and every score comes with three questions for the coach. Pro removes those limits and adds PDF import and export to PDF, MIDI and MusicXML: US$11.99 a month or US$39.99 a year (Apple charges the equivalent local price elsewhere), and the yearly plan starts with a 14-day free trial. There is no lifetime tier and no advertising, and you can cancel at any time; the exact price for your region is confirmed at the point of purchase.

Through your Apple subscription settings, in the same place as every other App Store subscription. Cancelling stops future renewals and you keep Pro until the period you have paid for runs out.

Your scores live in your own account. They are never sold and never shared. There are no ads and no third-party trackers in the app.

Yes. You can delete individual scores or your whole account, and deleting the account removes your scores with it. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is held and for how long.

Scanning music you own for your own study and practice is generally fine in most places, in much the same way as photocopying a page for your own use. Distributing what comes out is a different question, and copyright can apply both to the composition and to the particular published edition. If you plan to share anything, check the position where you live.

Yes. In Sheetly you photograph your printed sheet music, the app reads the notation and plays it, and then you can ask the built-in coach about that exact score: which fingering or slide position to use in bar 3, why the rhythm in bar 12 keeps collapsing, what a marking means, or which bars to drill tonight. The coach answers by bar number because it has the notes of the page you scanned. It does not listen to you play. More on what you can ask.

For hearing, understanding and practising your own printed music on iPhone or iPad, Sheetly is the best sheet music reader app: it reads the notation, plays it, loops a bar, and has a coach that has read your page. If you only want a PDF library on a music stand, forScore and Piascore are the established choices. On Android, PlayScore 2. The full comparison is here.

Yes. Sheetly photographs a printed page, reads the notes on its servers in a few seconds, and hands back a score that plays in the sound of any of its 25 instruments, from piano to tuba, at any tempo. PlayScore 2 does this on-device. Desktop tools such as ScanScore, PhotoScore and Audiveris expect a flat scan rather than a phone photo. How it works, step by step.

Partly. Lesson apps like Simply Piano, Flowkey and Yousician listen to you play and check your notes against their own song library. Sheetly does the other half: it reads the sheet music you already own, plays it, and lets you ask a coach about that score. It does not hear you play and it does not replace a teacher. Which kind you want is explained here.

Yes. Sheetly supports 25 instruments, from piano and organ to violin, flute, trumpet, trombone and tuba, and reads single-line parts as well as grand-staff piano music. The coach adapts its answers to the part: slide positions for trombone, fingerings for violin, and so on. See all 25 instruments.

Both photograph a printed score and play it back. PlayScore 2 runs its recognition on the device, so it is faster, works offline and exists on Android; Sheetly reads the page on a server, which costs a few seconds but lets it use a far larger model for photographs, and then adds what PlayScore 2 does not advertise: record your own take against the score, and ask a coach that has read the actual notes. Both apps loop a passage and change the tempo. The full comparison is here.

For learning a piece on iPhone or iPad, yes: Sheetly has a coach that has read your page, records a take against the score, and publishes its accuracy benchmark with the method. Halbestunde is the more established app, runs on Android and the web, and has transposition and a song gallery; it advertises “99% scanning accuracy” without a published method that we could find. The full comparison is here.

For hearing and practising a photographed page on an iPhone, Sheetly; for transcribing, editing notation, syncing a score to a video or teaching students in a browser, Soundslice. Soundslice is the deeper platform and runs anywhere. Sheetly is the focused one: photograph it, hear it, understand it, practise it, with a coach that has read the page. The full comparison is here.

No. Sheetly’s coach has read the notes on your page and answers questions about them; it does not hear you. MusPal records a performance and grades pitch, rhythm and posture, mainly for violin, at a much higher price. If you want a machine to grade your intonation, MusPal; if you want to hear, understand and practise the printed music you own, Sheetly. The full comparison is here.

Sheetly is free to download on the App Store, and the free tier is a real one: your first pages scan for free while you set up, then one page a month, and every score comes with three questions for the coach. Unlimited scanning and exporting files need the Pro subscription. If you have a desktop computer and a flatbed scanner, Audiveris is free, open source and genuinely good on flat scans. How it compares to a phone app is here.

Yes. Sheetly runs on iPhone and iPad from the same App Store listing, and the larger screen suits reading along with the score on a music stand. An Android version is in development.

No. Sheetly reads standard staff notation, including guitar music written in notation, but not tablature or chord diagrams. What that means for guitarists is explained here.

Not reliably, and neither can the other mainstream scanners. Handwritten notation is an open research problem. The practical route is to typeset the piece in free notation software, export a PDF, and import that into Sheetly. More on handwriting here.

MusicXML is the standard interchange format, so MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico, Finale, Flat and most other notation editors open it directly. MIDI goes into any DAW. The PDF-to-MusicXML guide walks through it.

On photographs, clearly: 95% against 50% strict F1 on the same 31-piece suite. On clean scans it is 96% against 88%, and on 60 systems cut from real scanned pages Sheetly scored 90% mean to Audiveris’s 58%. Audiveris is excellent at what it was built for, which is flat scans on a desktop. The full benchmark and method are published here.

Email hello@trysheetly.com and describe what happened. If a specific page scanned badly, sending the photograph you used is the single most useful thing you can include.

Yes, and please do, at the same address. A surprising amount of what is in the app arrived that way.