Extract score from PDF files and play it or export in MusicXML, MIDI, Myr (Harmony Assistant files) formats or in a digital music format such as WAV or AIFF. Listen to vocal parts and guitar audio created by the Physical Modeling Synthesizer tool, a piece of the Myriad HQ module.
PDFtoMusic is intended to help you process music scores available in PDF format. The tool can effectively read the musical elements from the score and synthesize their corresponding sounds for you to listen to them. Luckily, if this is the first time you use an application like PDFtoMusic, you can get enough assistance from various sources. In this respect, there is a navigable user manual and a community forum. Likewise, you can get free technical support from the developers even if you are an unregistered user.
PDFtoMusic has a straightforward interface that in many ways resembles that of a standard PDF editor. However, you will soon notice that there are playback buttons on the upper part of the window. Likewise, you can find many more functions available from the menu bar.
It is very easy to try this application as you do not even need to bother about getting supported music scores. So, you can use any of the PDFs provided with the installer. However, it also gives you access to a music score collection available on the Internet, which can even search from within the application.
It is good that not only can you listen to sounds in the score but also convert the original PDF to other formats, such as MIDI, Myr, WAV, MP3 and AIFF. In this regard, the output sound is highly configurable and it lets you set the volume and other parameters for every instrument separately.
There are a few things that are rather wishes than real shortcomings of PDFtoMusic. In fact, some of them are solved in the Pro version of this app. For instance, it cannot process entire folders. Similarly, it does not support exporting to XML file format, which would allow sharing scores with many musical programs. Neither can it export to MyrWeb file format, which would let you display and play scores on the Internet without installing an add-on on your browser.
In general, PDFtoMusic produces surprising results as to reading music from PDF score sheets. It is a pity, however, that it cannot process scanned music sheets, which would definitely expand its possibilities. The product is cross-platform and it is excellent news that you do not need to buy separate licenses if you intend to use it on two different operating systems. As said, there is a trial version which can process the first page of the document, though.
