Could any one tell me what is the best computer programe for transposing sheet music? I would like to be able to scan the music into my computer and then transpose is this possible?

I'm not aware of anything that can do that. It's the scanning in bit that's the hard bit.

You can transpose an mp3 backing track using audacity though.

Or you can use notation software like musescore to manually input the notes and then it will easily transpose.

Alternatively you can go to musicroom and purchase the same music as a download and change the key before you print it.

hth

Though music publishers that have scanning facilities are good you do have to check and usually edit some of it before you transpose. The clearer the copy the better the scanned image is interpreted.
I have Music Publisher from Braeburn software.

Otherwise you can do as Express yourself suggests and type the music in and then use the transpose facility that I think most music publishing software has.
Sometimes I just transpose as I type it in....
Depending on who is going to use it you might find that the low tech version using pencil and manuscript paper is good enough.

Would this be any use? I know you can scan music with it, but not sure if you can transpose once it's done.

http://www.neuratron.com/photoscore.htm

Yes, the transposing afterwards is the relatively easy part. Scanning is often pretty inaccurate, depending on the complexity of the score and the quality of the print. I found photoscore only got past the chocolate teapot stage when I bought photoscore ultimatre. Once scanned, you export it to Sibelius. The rest is a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Once you have got it to accept that it has the right number of beats in a bar, which is its usual grouse, it's easier to correct the individual pitches once you've got it into Sibelius.

But as others have said, if you have a program which will transpose, and most notation software will do that nowadays, it may be quicker - not quick, bt quicker - to input the music in the first place.

There's so much tidying needs re-do after photoscore that, I usually find, it's just quicker to record it in yourself (on a program like Sibellius) and then transpose.

I find Sibelius doesn't record well in live time from MIDI. The latency problems on most computers seem to make it hard to play along to the click and still get it displaying on the beat, and as for recording second voices while you can hear the first, and expecting them to coincide in the score, forget it.

Or have some of you managed to get round this?

It's a pity, becasue in its early days, I think Sibelius did do this properly, and even boated that it culd tell if you'd speeded up or slowed down.

Sibelius includes PhotoscoreLite which can scan in music which can then be transposed. It has some limitations, though. If you pay for the full version you can do much more.

Comparison between the two versions here.

Not cheap!

Finale has a facility (and I would be surprised if Sibelius did not) to enter notes from a MIDI keyboard at any speed and what gets entered is a note of length specified by the numeric keys. If you have long runs of semiquavers this is as quick as you can play them accurately, with no need to keep a regular speed. Changing note lengths (including dots of extension) slow you down a bit.

I think it improves if you set the quantisation level correctly. for example, if the shortest notes you are going to input are semi-quavers, tell it and it won't try to interpolate demi-semi-quavers with hemi-demi-semi-quaver rests etc...

Latency is a general PC issue and probably requires some money spending on a decent sound card and making sur eyou have enough RAM.

Finale theoretically has the ability to scan music, which can then be transposed. I, like many others, have rarely been able to get a "clean" copy this way. Corrections take so long it is quicker (with practice!) to do all the input at the computer and then transpose it.

Oh, if only that were the problem! But even if it's set only to accept quavers, it will still print late if I try to play exactly on the click whtih is on the beat. I don't think it has to do with quantization

I have humungous RAM and onboard sound. Last time I spoke to the company who made my computer for me (which was over two years ago) they said it shouldn't need an extra card. I might try them again.

Musescore can too.

Although if you're a good typist, with practice, then you can be just as quick with the computer keyboard.

Yes, you can do that with Sibelius too, but I suppose it depends how much of a bother it is to link it to your keyboard - mine usually isn't. It' s just as quick for me to type as to play and input note length changes, and I don't have to change "tasks" whenever I want to repeat or copy passages. But there are a few songs I used to do in school to which I've never written out the piano part exactly as I used to play it and I'm getting too lazy to recreate it from scratch, so they remain unpublished (if you call Score Exchange publishing)

When I was still in school we had a Yamaha DGX which would save as MIDI to a floppy disc (a device now only recognised by many as a save button ) which had the added advantage that if I was using auto accompaniment it would actually transcribe that to MIDI as well.

Alas none of my current very modest keyboards will save MIDI in that way (and I don't have a floppy drive now)

I don't want this enough to spend ??? on another keyboard just for that

I am a fan of Finale, and have been for many years. I'm currently running Finale 2010 (so much more user friendly than Sibelius).

Although I have never used it for scanning before, I did a trial run just a few minutes ago.

I placed a simple piano piece, A4 size, on my scanner with Finale up and running, followed the instructions, and it was on screen within a couple of minutes.

I had to adjust the page size, but once it was there I could transpose it quite freely, and could make any of the adjustments I normally make to a new score.

Hope this helps.

Is the scanning facility built into Finale, rather than as a separate program, as with photoscore and Sibelius?

Like sbhoa, I scan using Braeburn's \Music Publisher and then transpose as necessary. As sbhoa says, scanning from a good quality copy is critical. Otherwise you spend ages correcting what the machine has interpreted from your scan before you can do owt else with it. No idea whether any of the other systems do it better.

OTOH, it impressed the practice staff no end when I sat in the dentist's waiting room with a pencil and MS paper transposing an anthem....


P4

Reading this thread makes me wonder whether that particular skill will die out.... I was writing out transposed parts before anyone told me it was meant to be difficult....
Sometimes I just input the transposed version if I want a nice printed copy and it's not going to scan well.

Photoscore will scan from a pdf as well, so the quality isn't so bad (unless of course the pdf has been made from a poor scan in the first place) so probably a lot of the others will do that as well


....as indeed might transposing at the keyboard now that you can do it at the touch of a button. I'm quite glad I'm old enough to have been made taught to do it at an early age (OK, not 6, but maybe 12)

Dear All
Thank you for your help. I think I might give Finale a go.

Sorry I'm late getting back to you. Yes, it is built in to Finale 2010. No extra software required.

Cheers.