Idea for a Sheet Music Reader App... Need Advice!!

p.esquire · Feb 1, 2011

Hello Gents,

I'm new and hoping you all could help shed some light on the process of App development and whether or not my idea is actually possible. So...

The concept is to create an app that can take a picture of a piece (or line) of sheet music and then transfer it into an app that can display it, play it back, and allow for certain amounts of manipulation.

It's along the same lines as other sheet music scanning software around today, but it would be a mobile version able to be used as a reference and educational resource. I have an open source version of the sheet music reading software right now.

My main question is...
1) Is it possible to integrate computer based open source software with the app development process?
2) Or would you have to completely rewrite and design the program from scratch to be used in an Android App?
3) Any suggestions on where to begin?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Phil

jae_63 · Feb 1, 2011

This is a very cool idea. After searching around:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_OCR

I'm guessing that you're using either Audiveris or OpenOMR, hopefully the former since it's more recently maintained. You're in luck with both packages, since they're both written in Java which is by far the best programming language for Android. And you're in luck that at least Audiveris is already cross-platform, which means that some of the platform-specific code is (probably) already separated from the 'smart' image processing.

You'd want to look at the Android camera APIs and image processing APIs, e.g.:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Camera.PictureCallback.html
http://whyandroid.com/android/68-working-with-images-in-googles-android.html

I think that this very feasible, but it looks to me like a month's work, working a few hours per day.

Disclaimer: I'm an experienced developer, but not an android development expert.

AngryHatter · Feb 1, 2011

App should also be able to open music contained in other sources.
An attachment to an email for instance.
Record something and transcribe it - sheet music or tabs(ugh).

I will buy this.

Farmers · Jul 27, 2011

Hi

Just wondered how you'd got on with this app idea? I would quite happily pay for an app that does this job well!

Thanks

sprocket28 · Jul 27, 2011

Farmers said:
Hi

Just wondered how you'd got on with this app idea? I would quite happily pay for an app that does this job well!

Thanks

x2

id love to see how you got on with this.

jae_63 · Jul 27, 2011

I now see that someone else started working on this over a year ago, but apparently abandoned the project.

http://code.google.com/p/androidmcr/

bmar29 · Jul 27, 2011

AngryHatter said:
App should also be able to open music contained in other sources.
An attachment to an email for instance.
Record something and transcribe it - sheet music or tabs(ugh).

I will buy this.

The record something and transcribe it will not be practical. There are very few programs in existence that can take an audio file and output a transcription (assuming that we are talking about polyphonic files and not MIDI files). I suppose you could have it record as a MIDI file and then it could transcribe it correctly, however MIDI files are not real audio files so it could really only be used to record single-line melodies.
If you really want to record a polyphonic audio file and transcribe it, then you might want to take a look at Celemony's Melodyne Editor. As far as I know, this is the only program available for commercial use that can do it accurately.

celemony_ :: Melodyne editor

Anyway, with my experience Neuratron Photoscore does score scanning the best.

Scan Music - PhotoScore Music Scanning Software

Farmers · Aug 17, 2011

I'm not even all that interested in being able to manipulate the notes. I would like to be able to use my phone or tablet as a music book so it would turn pages at a touch of the screen so that I don't have to carry around a huge amount of music books.

Please Phil let us know how you're getting on. I would quite happily pay for an app that was good and I know several other musicians who would do the same

Thanks!

sprocket28 · Aug 21, 2011

Farmers said:
I would like to be able to use my phone or tablet as a music book so it would turn pages at a touch of the screen so that I don't have to carry around a huge amount of music books.

Scan your music books as pdf's and put them on your phone/tablet. Job done.

alostpacket · Aug 22, 2011

This is one of those things that might be easier than it sounds. Think of how many banks have OCR check deposit. Obviously this would only work with sheet music as explained above

Essentially the trick is to get it working on a server as some type of web app. Then the phone merely sends the picture to the server.

That's not so easy.... but the Android part of the app wouldn't be that bad -- unless you wanted a full MIDI editor.

Anesthetique · Jan 13, 2012

Something that could turn pages for me would be awesome.

--something that can use the mic to hear the notes you are playing and turn pages based on that. As long as it was accurate, this would be a very useful feature.

Ulf Hansson · Jun 22, 2014

A lot of cool ideas, but hardly something for a working musician? I'd never trust something like that...

Asus transformer, the Fakebook app and an Airturn pedal works perfectly, every night of the week.
http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skrivarna.fakebook.android
AirTurn

Idea for a Sheet Music Reader App... Need Advice!!

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