Read Music problems

Read Music turns a page of printed music into tab and notes, but reading a page is guesswork in places, and Stab says where it was unsure. This page explains what it reads well, what it can’t read, and how to find and fix its mistakes. How to open a PDF and use Read Music is in PDFs and Read Music.

Read Music got it wrong

Available on every platform.

What it reads, and what it doesn’t

Stab reads PDFs made by an app: a score or a tab exported or printed to PDF from a notation or tab program. Their pages hold the music as drawn lines and letters, which Stab reads back exactly. See What Stab reads for the list.

It also reads pictures of printed music: a scanned PDF, a photo or a screenshot (Scanned PDFs, Photos of printed music). There, the Read Music model, our own, trained to recognise music symbols, finds them on the cleaned page, and it’s less certain than reading a drawn PDF: expect more bars to check. Sharp, straight, evenly lit pages read best.

The web doesn’t read music from pictures (a scanned PDF, a photo or a screenshot): it keeps them with the song to read along with. Stab on a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, an iPad or Android reads them.

When nothing comes of it, Stab says why:

“It isn’t a PDF that can be opened (or it’s locked with a password).” Open it in a PDF viewer; if it asks for a password, save an unlocked copy.
“Its pages are pictures (a scan or photos), and those aren’t read in the browser.” Open it in Stab on a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, an iPad or Android. “Its pages are pictures (a scan or photos): reading them needs the Read Music model.” Stab comes with the model; this copy doesn’t have it. Install Stab again from where you got it.
“No music was found on its pages: staves with notes or TAB.” The pages hold no staves Stab recognises.
“Nothing read there”: the region you dragged held no music.

A PDF with scanned pages among drawn ones reads its drawn pages at once and its scanned pages after them; the message as the song opens says how many of each.

A PDF with a few scanned pages among drawn ones is read, and the message as the song opens says how many pages couldn’t be.

Where it was unsure

As the song opens, the message says how many bars were read and how many are to check: bars Stab was less than 75 % sure of. They’re easy to find:

The Image pane outlines them on the page (Show › Bars to Check in its menu).
Next Bar to Check goes to each in turn, and Review takes you through them one at a time beside the page (Reviewing what was read).
Colour Notes By › Confidence colours each note read from the page by how sure Stab was: grey when sure, redder the less sure, fully red at half sure or less. With value bars shown, each note’s bar says how sure, such as “62 % sure”.

Holding the pointer over a note on the page says what it became, and its bar, with “(to check)” on a bar Stab was unsure of.

Putting it right

Compare a bar to check with the page, play it, and fix it as you would any note: retype a fret, move a note, change a length. Some mistakes have a quicker way out:

A whole passage came out wrong. Undo the reading (it’s one step), then drag a rectangle round just those staves and choose Read Music in Region.
Something on the page isn’t music (a heading, a handwritten note, a stamp). Drag a rectangle round it, choose Ignore Region, and read the page again: only the bars you haven’t edited are replaced.
The music went onto the wrong track. Put the caret on the right track first, then read the region again. Where a clip is already there, the music goes onto a new voice, so nothing is written over.
A songbook page holds several pieces. Reading Options › Several Pieces on a Page in the Image pane’s menu reads them as one song with a marker at each, or each as its own song.
The Score doesn’t look like the page. Keep the Page’s Layout keeps the printed systems, stems, beams and spelling; Lay Out Fresh in the Score pane’s menu lays it out as Stab would its own song.

Pages that read less well

Three voices or more on a staff. Stab reads up to two voices a staff.
An unusual music font. Stab knows the music fonts of the common notation apps. Notes drawn in a font it doesn’t know can be missed.

Scans and photos. Blur, a steep angle, deep shadows, a page curling into the spine, faint or very small print: each costs symbols, and a missed beam or time signature can change a whole passage’s rhythm. Scan at 300 dpi, or photograph the page flat, filling the picture, in even light.
Handwritten music isn’t read.

Telling us what went wrong

If a page reads wrongly in a way you can’t fix, choose Export Page with Layers… in the Image pane’s menu. It makes a picture of the page with what Stab saw drawn over it; send it to [email protected] with the PDF if you can, and the version of Stab you use (see Finding help). To see more of what it read before you send it, turn on Show Reading Details in Settings’ Read Music section: the pane’s Show menu then offers every layer of the reading.