Sheet music to jianpu, in your browser.

Why convert staff to jianpu?

Jianpu is the lingua franca of Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, and Burmese music, and the standard notation for most erhu, dizi, guzheng, pipa, and gamelan repertoire. Composers and arrangers who write Western staff scores but want to share with jianpu-reading musicians need a translator, not a retraining program.

In practice that means Chinese diaspora composers writing for ensembles back home, Indonesian church musicians whose congregations read angka, and music educators teaching across both traditions in the same classroom, anyone whose score and whose players speak different notations.

How the conversion works

Staff notation uses fixed pitches: every note on the staff has an absolute pitch determined by the clef. Jianpu is movable-do: 1 is always the tonic of the current key. The mapping is a one-step relabel:

• In C major: 1=C, 2=D, 3=E, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A, 7=B
• In G major: 1=G, 2=A, 3=B, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E, 7=F♯
• In D major: 1=D, 2=E, 3=F♯, 4=G, 5=A, 6=B, 7=C♯

Octave is marked with dots above (higher) or below (lower) the number. Sharps and flats sit in front of the number (#4, b7).

Duration works differently from staff notation, and this is the part worth learning properly:

• A plain number is one beat, the equivalent of a quarter note.
• Underlines beneath shorten it: one line halves it to an eighth, two lines to a sixteenth. Consecutive short notes share a continuous underline, exactly as staff notation beams them.
• Dashes after lengthen it: 5 - is two beats, 5 - - - is four.
• An augmentation dot after the number adds half again, same as on a staff.
• 0 is a rest, and takes the same underlines and dashes as any note.

Step 1, export your sheet music

MusicXML is the music industry's interchange format. Most notation apps export it cleanly:

• MuseScore: File → Export → MusicXML (compressed .mxl or uncompressed .musicxml)
• Finale: File → Export → MusicXML
• Sibelius: File → Export → MusicXML (Sibelius 7+)
• Dorico: File → Export → MusicXML
• Any DAW (Logic, Cubase, Ableton): Export as MIDI
• Printed score (no source file): Use DomiSol's image-to-score feature, drop a photo or PDF

Step 2, open the DomiSol editor

Go to https://dash.domisol.app and sign in. Free to start. Works in any modern browser.

Step 3, drop the file

In the editor, click Create in the bar along the top, then Import MusicXML / MIDI. Drag your MusicXML or MIDI file into the modal. DomiSol parses it locally, detects the key, converts every note to its scale-degree number, and renders the result in jianpu.

Toggle to solfa at any time, the underlying score data is the same; only the visual rendering changes. Staff notation is an export, from Export → Staff notation.

Step 4, edit, play, share, export

Your score now appears in jianpu. You can edit any note, add lyrics, play back the audio, harmonize a melody to SATB with AI, transpose, export to PDF, or share via URL.

What DomiSol doesn't (yet) translate

• Chords within one voice usually keep only their highest note.
• Tuplets other than triplets in a MIDI file, and lengths neither notation can write, are rounded to the nearest thirty-second.
• Mid-piece key changes in a MusicXML file are flattened to the first key (the later notes keep their pitch, with accidentals). A MIDI file's key changes are kept.
• Slurs and ties are best-effort; dynamics are not imported.

Try it now

DomiSol is the only web-based editor where jianpu is the editing model, not an export format. MusicXML and MIDI importers route staff music straight into that model.

Open the free jianpu editor →, or jump straight into the app to import your first file.

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Related guides

• Free online jianpu editor
• Jianpu notation: read & write 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
• Convert sheet music to solfa
• DomiSol for jianpu musicians

From the blog

• The best tools for writing jianpu
• All DomiSol blog posts