We're talking all about optical music recognition software, or what you might call "music scanning apps". John Hinchey is back on the show, and he has written a review for the Scoring Notes blog that covers four of these leading apps: PlayScore 2, ScanScore, PhotoScore Ultimate, and SmartScore 64 Pro. On the podcast, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk with John about his approach to working with these apps and how he evaluated them. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each program, and how you can incorporate them into your own work. John’s also prepared a step-by-step checklist of the items to look for once you bring your music into the scanning software, and he tells us what to do to get the music in top shape, whether you’re preparing the music for playback or exporting it to MusicXML for use in your favorite music notation software.

More on Scoring Notes: A review of optical music recognition software