Useful music tools

[kypfer]

This is not a commercial promotion, just a mention of a couple of software programs I'm finding useful.

PDFtoMusic http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/pdftomusic.htm will take a pdf file, as produced by many music editing programs, and play it as a tune !!

You can then export it for editing to Melody Assistant http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/melody.htm which can then export it as an ABC file, should you so wish.

These utilities can save much time re-editing published pdf's, for use with a limited-scale instrument such as the Mountain Ocarinas.

Do be aware, although the freely downloadable "demo-ware" versions of these programs have limitations, they can still be used for small pieces of music such as folk tunes and dance melodies

[Pat Anderson]

Here is some more on useful music tools!

Wikifonia is probably the most amazing source of free sheet music on the web. Thousands of tunes, show tunes, pop tunes, folk tunes. ABC notation is the most amazing way to save and share music. I had been simply saving tunes from Wikfonia as PDFs, but I wanted them in ABC notation. Tunes in ABC notation can be loaded into ABC software and played, transposed, edited and manipulated in many ways that simple PDF files cannot be. But ABC is not one of the output options on Wikifonia.

I recently started using music notation programs and learned about MusicXML, and the solution became obvious! Here is how to do it. Download and install MuseScore. Then choose MusicXML as the output option on Wikifonia. You will download a compressed MusicXML file that you will need to load into MuseScore and then save as an uncompressed MusicXML file. Then open the MusicXML file in a text editor, select all and copy it to the clipboard. Then go to the ABC Converter and paste the MusicXML text into the online converter and hit "Submit." The output will be the tune in ABC notation that you can copy and paste into your ABC software or just a text editor to save! It takes way longer to describe than it takes to do!

[IzzyB]

I didn't know you could use the ABC Converter on mandolintab to convert from MusicXML! I have one song in MuseScore's format that I wanted to convert to ABC, and I didn't feel like downloading and installing something to do it. Thanks for sharing this trick!

[Pat Anderson]

Oh my, this moring I discovered it is even easier than I though - you can skip the MuseScore and mandolintab converter steps completely with EasyABC - just download the compressed MusicXML file from Wikifonia and import it directly into EasyABC.  I don't know if other ABC software can do this as well, it may be. If the compressed MusicXML file gives an error imiporting to EasuyABC, it can still be opened in  MuseScore and saved as a uncompressed MusicXML for import into EasyABC. 

[Daddy-O]

I just read this thread for the first time.  This is pretty exciting since it sounds like a great way to get music and adjust the key it is written in with minimal effort.  Thank you all for taking the time to post this information.
Daddy-O

[hoodsmom]

If you are on a Mac, I would be careful with the demo versions of Melody Assistant and PDF to Music.
They have nonstandard installers - you can't see what's being installed even when you drill down into the package contents and although they're supposed to create a log in the receipts file, they didn't.
I had to do a smart search for all items installed on my drive in the last X minutes to find all traces of the programs so I could delete them. Files were scattered all around my computer.
In addition, PDF to Music made errors when playing a simple score and is very picky about the kind of pdfs it will process. Even when I selected images things obviously made with music software and converted them to pdf, PDF to Music choked on them.