Photos, files and recordings

Most people arrive with music that already exists — a photocopied hymnbook page, a file from MuseScore, or a tune in their head. Four ways in.

Photo → score

⋯ → Photo → score. Take a picture, or upload a PDF, and it comes back as an editable score. It reads printed staff notation, handwritten solfa, jianpu and hymnbook pages; multi-page PDFs are handled a page at a time.

Photo import is for paying accounts. Any credit pack or the 7-day Pass opens it, and it stays open after that; the credits a new account starts with do not. An account that has never paid sees those offers where the place to drop a file would be. See The 7-day Pass, Lifetime, Pro and page packs.

A page costs 8 credits. If your credits cover only some of a PDF’s pages, the first pages they cover are read, and the button says how many before you press it. The banner above the score then says which pages were read and offers the rest for their own price (Read page 3, for example): choose the same file again and only those pages are read and charged. They are added to the end of the score, and Undo takes them out. If they cannot be joined to it, for instance because they have a different number of voices, they open as a separate score and the banner says so.

Getting good results:

• Fill the frame with the music. Crop out the table, your hand, the facing page.
• Flat and evenly lit. A shadow across the staff costs more accuracy than low resolution does.
• Tell it what it’s looking at if you know — the source-type selector (staff / solfa / jianpu / hymnbook) helps on a difficult page.

Always play it back once. Recognition gets pitches essentially right and is weaker on octave dots and duration underlines — exactly the two things hardest to proofread by eye and easiest to catch by ear.

Import a file

Create → Import MusicXML / MIDI, then drop the file on the dialog or choose it. It takes .musicxml, .xml, .mxl (zipped) and .mid / .midi, and a DomiSol backup (see below).

Staff notation is converted on the way in: DomiSol works out the key and rewrites the pitches as scale degrees, so what you get is real solfa or jianpu rather than a picture of a staff.

A MusicXML file keeps the title it was saved with. A file with no title, and every MIDI file, is named after the file. Click the title in the editor to change it.

The words under the notes of a MusicXML file come in with it: each syllable under its note, every verse, and a word split across notes keeps its hyphens. They go where the file has them. A hymn printed with its words once, under the top voice, arrives with words under the top voice only, and Copy to all voices in the Words tab copies them under the other voices, note for note. A score holds 13 verses and 64 characters under one note. Words past either are left out and the rest of the file comes in. Before it imports anything, the dialog says which bar and which voice: choose Import without those words to go on, or Cancel.

A hymn in a MusicXML file is usually written on two staves, the soprano and alto on the upper one and the tenor and bass on the lower. It comes in as four parts, named Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Where the file writes two notes on one stem, the upper note goes to one voice and the lower to the other, and a single note there is given to both. A voice the file leaves silent gets a rest, so every part is the same length. A piano or organ accompaniment beside the voices comes in as the top line of each of its staves. A file cannot always say whether two notes on a stem are two singers or one player, so check the parts after a file like this.

A note keeps the length the file gives it. One too long to write as a single note, such as five beats, comes in as two notes joined by a tie.

A song in a MusicXML file that begins on an upbeat keeps it when the file marks the first bar as a pickup measure, which is how notation programs save one. DomiSol sets the score’s Upbeat to match, so the bar lines stay where the file put them (see Upbeats and breathing). A short first bar the file does not mark comes in as an ordinary bar, because it may be a bar with a beat missing. If it is an upbeat, set Upbeat in the Layout tab. MusicXML that DomiSol exports marks the upbeat the same way.

A MIDI file is a record of the notes as they were played, not a page. It has no rests, no bar lines and no ties, so DomiSol writes them: a silence becomes a rest, a note held over a bar line comes in tied, and the bars are counted from the file’s time signature. Each track becomes a part (each channel, in a file that keeps all its voices in one track), and a drum track is left out. A part is one line: where a track holds chords or two voices, the top notes come in.

A MIDI file has no way to mark an upbeat. DomiSol sets Upbeat from silence before the first note, or from the music where the long notes show where the bars begin, and it can be wrong. If the bar lines sit a beat out all the way through, choose the right Upbeat in the Layout tab, or No pickup.

A MIDI file names its key only if the program that saved it wrote one in, and many don’t. Then DomiSol works the key out from the notes, which is a best guess. If a MIDI import reads as though it is in the wrong key, it probably is. Change key, at the top of the score, then Rewrite it, same sound writes every note again from the doh you choose and leaves the sound as it is (see Solfa, jianpu and the key). If the program that made the file can export MusicXML, import that instead. MusicXML carries the key signature.

Open a backup

When a score can’t be saved, DomiSol offers it to you as a file: Save a copy in the editor’s top bar when a save fails, Download a copy when the tab has lost its connection, and Download my score if the page breaks. The file’s name ends in -backup.json, and it holds the score as it was in that tab.

To open it again, choose Create → Import MusicXML / MIDI in the editor and pick the file. It opens as a new score in your library with everything it had (parts, lyrics and verses, the upbeat, the page setup), and the score it was taken from is left as it is. The new score is private whatever the original was: a share link stays with the score it belongs to.

A backup that was cut short or damaged is refused with a sentence saying so, and nothing is added to your library. If the tab it came from is still open, download a fresh copy there.

In the phone app, a save that fails shows Save failed under the score’s title, and one that is waiting for a connection shows Not saved yet. Tap either for the reason and Save a copy, which sends the same backup file through your phone’s share sheet (to Files, WhatsApp or mail). The app can’t open a backup yet: open it in the editor in a browser, as above.

Paste notation

Create → Paste notation. If you already have jianpu or solfa as text (in an email, a WhatsApp message, a document), paste it in. Faster than retyping and it handles the common shorthands.

Opened from a score, the dialog has two buttons. Create a new score makes one from the text. Add to (it names the part you are writing, for example Add to Alto) puts the text into the score you have open: over the rest you clicked, after the note you selected, or at the end. In a part nobody has written yet it starts at the first bar. This is the quick way to fill a second voice: click the Alto’s name, open Paste notation, type m d m m | f m d -, and press Add to Alto. One Undo takes it out.

Sing it

Create → Sing to score. Sing or hum with a metronome and get notation back.

Use metronome mode rather than free mode whenever you can: with a known tempo and time signature, the notes are quantised to a real grid and the result needs far less tidying. Wear headphones so the click doesn’t bleed into the microphone.

Group composition extends this to two singers on the same click track, stacking the takes into a duet that lines up bar for bar.

After any import

Whatever the route, you land in the editor with an ordinary score, and nothing is locked. After a photo, a short review sits above the score with the key it read and the first bar worth a second look; press Looks right once you have checked. Play it against the original once, fix what you hear, and carry on. Checking a photo import against the page has the details.

Where to go next

• Notes, rhythm and rests — fixing what came back.
• The AI features — what else can act on it.