from a PDF
to a score you can edit.

What MusicXML actually is

A sheet music PDF is a picture. It knows where the ink is, and nothing about the notes. MusicXML is the opposite: a text file that records every pitch, duration, clef, key, tie and dynamic as data, which is why a notation program can open it, transpose it, re-engrave it and play it. Converting a PDF to MusicXML means reading the picture and writing the music out as data, and that job is called optical music recognition.

MusicXML is the interchange format the whole notation world agrees on. MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico, Finale, Guitar Pro and most practice apps can read it, and most can write it. That is why it is the format worth asking for: a MIDI file carries pitches and timing but throws away the notation, while MusicXML keeps the clefs, the key signature, the beaming, the ties and the two staves of a piano part as two staves. The difference between the two is explained in full here.

The catch is that a PDF almost never contains MusicXML already. Even a PDF exported straight from a notation program is usually just vector drawing instructions with no musical meaning attached. So the conversion has to be done by recognition, the same way you would scan a photographed page, and the same cautions apply.

PDF to MusicXML in five steps

The whole conversion takes about as long as making a coffee, and most of that is the recognition running. Sheetly treats a PDF exactly like a photographed page, except that the input is already flat, square and evenly lit, which is the best case a scanner ever sees.

1. Import the PDFOpen Sheetly, choose import rather than the camera, and pick the PDF from Files, iCloud Drive, Mail or wherever it lives. Multi-page PDFs import as one piece; you do not need to split them first.
2. Let the recognition runThe pages are sent to our servers, read, and handed back as a score. A few seconds per page is normal. You need a connection for this step, and for nothing afterwards.
3. Press play, once, all the way throughThis is the cheapest check there is. A misread clef, a missed key signature or a dropped bar announces itself in the ear long before you would spot it on screen. Note the bar numbers of anything that sounds wrong.
4. Export MusicXMLFrom the score, choose export and pick MusicXML. Sheetly also exports MIDI and PDF; for anything you plan to edit, MusicXML is the one you want. Send it to Files, AirDrop it to a Mac, or share it straight into your notation app.
5. Open it and look at the first barIn MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico or Finale, check the clefs, the key signature and the time signature in bar one. If those three are right, the rest of the file is usually right with it. If one is wrong, fix it there and most of the score falls into place.

That is the whole flow. The rest of this page is about what the file will and will not contain, because knowing that up front saves a lot of hunting later.

What survives, and what to check

From a clean, printed PDF, pitches, rhythms, clefs, key and time signatures, ties, and the grouping of a piano part into two staves all convert well. Text, fingering, dynamics and lyrics are where every recognition system, ours included, is least reliable, and they are the items worth a deliberate pass before you trust the file.

What usually comes through cleanly

• Pitches and rhythms. The core of the music. On Sheetly’s own 31-piece benchmark of clean printed scores, measured by strict F1, where a note only counts when pitch, onset and duration are all correct, the score was 96%. A clean PDF is exactly that kind of input.
• Clefs and key signatures. Including changes mid-piece, which is where a missed one does the most damage.
• Time signatures and bar structure. Bars that do not add up are the most common sign something went wrong, and the easiest to see in a notation editor.
• Ties and dots. A tie and a slur look almost identical on the page; the distinction matters for playback and is usually right but worth a glance in long held passages.
• Staff grouping. Two staves braced as a piano stay a piano. Four staves of a string quartet stay four parts. Why that is harder than it sounds is here.

What to check by hand

• Voices. A staff with two voices, stems up and stems down, is the hardest thing to read and the first thing to check if the rhythm of a bar sounds crowded or thin.
• Lyrics and text. Tempo marks, expression text, rehearsal letters and lyrics may be missing or misplaced. Re-entering them in the editor is quicker than hunting for them.
• Fingering and articulation. Treat these as absent and add the ones you need.
• Repeats and endings. Repeat barlines and first-and-second-time brackets are read, but a missed one silently shortens the piece. Count the bars against the PDF if the length feels wrong.
• Tuplets. Triplets and other tuplets are a known weak point across optical music recognition generally. A bar that will not add up is very often a tuplet that lost its bracket.

When a desktop tool is the better choice

If your real job is to produce a corrected, publication-quality MusicXML file from a long or complex score, a desktop recogniser with a built-in correction editor is a better tool than any phone app, including Sheetly. ScanScore, PhotoScore and the free, open-source Audiveris all let you fix misread notes in place before exporting, and Sheetly does not.

That is an honest limitation, and the right tool depends on what you are converting and why:

• ScanScore is built around exactly this workflow on a desktop: scan, see what it got wrong, correct it, then export MusicXML. It is paid, tiered by how many staves it will read, and its trial limits MusicXML export to a few measures, so plan an evaluation around that.
• PhotoScore & NotateMe is the long-standing professional option, closely tied to Sibelius, with a mature correction workflow. It is priced for professionals and expects a desktop.
• Audiveris is free and open source, expects flat scans, wants some setup, and includes an editor. On our clean benchmark it scored 88% against Sheetly’s 96%. For a clean PDF on a desktop computer it is still a genuinely good answer, and you should try it before paying anyone.

Where Sheetly is the better choice is the case most people are actually in: you have a PDF on your phone, you want to hear it, practise it and maybe hand a MusicXML file to a notation program for light editing, and you would rather not sit at a desk to do it. For that, the phone is the right tool and the correction happens in whatever editor you open the file in.

We have not measured the closed products, ScanScore, PhotoScore or Sheet Music Scanner, through our own harness, so the numbers above compare Sheetly only with the open-source systems anyone can run. Their absence is a gap in our testing, not a verdict.

Before you export, ask about it

A MusicXML file is where most conversions end. In Sheetly it is one of the things you can do with a score that has been read, and not the most interesting one. Once the PDF is a score, you can loop a passage, slow it down, play it on piano, organ, flute or another instrument, record your own take against it, and ask the coach about what is written on the page.

For a conversion job specifically, the coach is useful as a second pair of eyes. It has the actual notes of the score, so it can tell you what time signature it sees, how many bars it counted, or whether bar 17 really has a triplet in it.

Ask Sheetly: a coach that has read your score

Not a chatbot bolted onto a music app. The coach has the actual notes of the page you just photographed, so you can ask about your bar 12 and get an answer about what is written in it.

does bar 17 add up? it sounds crowded

Bar 17 is written as 4/4 and the right hand holds five quavers and a crotchet, which is one quaver too many. The PDF almost certainly has a triplet bracket over the first three. That is worth fixing in your editor before you do anything else with the file.

what key is this in, and does it change?

Three flats, E‑flat major, from bar 1. The key signature changes to two sharps at bar 33 and stays there to the end. If your export shows three flats all the way through, the change was missed.

We know of no other sheet-music scanner that does this. Every other tool on this page hands you a transcription and stops.

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