Tag: scanning

Working with Digital Scores – OMEA 2025

CleanShot 2025-02-06 at 10.33.12@2x.

I am thrilled to be presenting four sessions at the Ohio Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference this weekend! My second session focuses on working with digital scores.

If you’d like to attend, the session is on February 7 at 5 PM. If you’re already here or have attended, thank you for coming!

This post serves as a resource for session notes, including links to the primary tools I mention in the session.

Apps for Scanning:
– Simple Scan
– Scanner Pro
– Apple Notes/Files

Apps for Scanning Notation
– Scoring Notes Article: Scanning the Current OMR Landscape
– Sheet Music Scanner
– Newzik
– Soundslice
– PlayScore 2
– SmartScore 64
– ScanScore 3

Apps for Managing Files
– Files App
– Dropbox
– Google Drive
– Documents
– Evernote

Apps for Working with Scores:
– forScore
– unReal Book
– Newzik

Notes on forScore:
– forScore Mac App Review
– Creating indexes with forScore
– The fastest way to get music into forScore
– forScore Automation Links

My Book:

Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Oxford University Press

View the video trailer

PlayScore, with Anthony Wilkes

Anthony Wilkes joins the show to talk about PlayScore 2, a sheet music scanning app. Anthony is the CEO of PlayScore, and in the conversation we talked all about what it can do, the challenges of developing music scanning software, and practical uses for teachers and students.

Patreon supporters receive bonus conversation about machine learning, the future of score scanning software, and automation.

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Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play Alongs.

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby – Audio Hijack 4
Anthony – Dorico

Music of the Week:
Robby – Listen to This – Audio Guide
Anthony – On BBC’s first ever live broadcast of Beatrice Harrison, featuring cellist Clare Deniz

Tech Tip of the Week:
Robby – Universal Control
Anthony – iPad multitasking

Where to Find Us:
Robby – Twitter | Blog | Book
Anthony – Twitter | Website

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Scanner Pro Update

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Earlier this fall, my favorite scanning app, Scanner Pro, came out with an update that can automatically categorize documents based on features it can identify across your various files.

One of the things that repels people from going paperless is that it often takes a lot of repetitive steps to manage files. Renaming, organizing in folders, tagging, etc…

Over the years, Scanner Pro has been aggressive about adding features to smartly take on some of this work through automation.

Scanner Pro can now automatically recognize your scans as sheet music, and label them as such.

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One of my other favorite features is the ability to designate a specific folder inside of Google Drive or Dropbox to save scans into in one tap. This makes saving scans to a specific folder of sheet music in my Google Drive as easy as can be.

🔗 Chris Russell on sheet music scanning apps

Last week Chris Russell reviewed a new score scanning app, ScanScore. I kind of like that he turned this review into a comparison of the different options available, with example photos. Here is a link to the post with a quote:

ScanScore – Technology in Music Education

So, how did it work? Again, I’m not in the scanning mode right now, so I’m creating an artificial comparison (something that really isn’t crucial to me on a need-to-get-it-done-as-quickly-as-possible basis). I decided to take a a version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata from IMSLP, and to see how the programs did with it.

While one example is not enough to effectively compare this kind of software, it’s still interesting to see where they stack up in the example he provided. I personally find that these scanner apps require more touch up than is worth the effort. In many cases it is still easier to manually recreate the score in a notation app. 

Of the apps Chris mentions in the post, Sheet Music Scanner is my favorite, even though it doesn’t do triplets yet.

🗒 Road Trip!!! Off to the Tennessee Music Educators Association Conference!

I am pumped to be spending the next four days in Nashville to present at the Tennessee Music Educators Association Conference. I am presenting three sessions tomorrow, Friday, April 13th. One of these sessions is brand new and focused entirely on teaching intonation to student musicians with the support of the Tonal Energy tuning app. Scroll down for links to all of my session notes.

Road Trip!!!

My wife and I are making a road trip out of this event. In addition to eating and drinking our way through the city over the next few days, I am excited to be seeing old friends and new. Tomorrow night we will be seeing the Nashville Symphony Orchestra performing a program of Elgar, Mozart, and Bach. I will get to watch a friend of mine from grad school, Joshua Hickman (Principal Timpanist), performing with the ensemble.

I will also get to meet friend, Craig McClellan, in person for the first time. Craig has an awesome education/technology blog called The Class Nerd and has been a recent regular on my podcast. (Listen here and here).

Craig and I may or may not have a very special project we are cooking up for teachers later this year…

Session Notes

Here are the session notes for my three sessions. Check them out!!!

Going Paperless with iPad (April 13, 9 am)

Working with Digital Scores (April 13, 10 am)

Teaching Intonation with Tonal Energy (April 13, 3 pm)

Announcing My First Book —> Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers!

I am excited to announce that I am writing a book!

Actually, I already wrote it. Oxford University Press will publish the book, “Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers,” this Fall. It will be the first title in the series, “Essential Music Technology: The Prestissimo Series” with series editor, Richard McCready.

The book will focus on how technology can help rather than stifle productivity in the music teaching profession. It will address such topics as: minimizing paper, managing tasks, taking good notes, organizing iTunes playlists, understanding music streaming services, working in the cloud, and managing scores. The book will provide an overview of the apps and services I have found most useful in my teaching experience. It will include sample workflows for using these technologies in music teaching contexts.

Stay tuned to this site for more information. The blog has been quiet this year as I have spent more time writing the book. Upon release, I plan to write posts of a supplementary nature. I also plan to do a miniseries on my podcast that offers commentary on the book. I will be inviting many insightful guests on the show to discuss a different chapter each episode.

I also have a really fun video trailer in the works featuring some brilliant acting talent from my colleagues in the Howard County Public School System and some awesome editing work from the guys over at Four/Ten Media.

I hope you will pick up a copy when it is released.