Sheet Music to MIDI Converter: From a Printed Score to a MIDI File

Upload the score as a PDF or as photos to the sheet music to MIDI converter at the top of this page, sign in, check the page count and the credit cost, and start. When the recognised score appears beside your page, press play to check it, then download the .mid and drag it into FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic or any other DAW.

As of November 2026, from each vendor's own pages: on the desktop, ScanScore (Windows and macOS, yearly licences from $9), SmartScore 64 (from $49 for the MIDI edition, $399 for Professional) and PhotoScore & NotateMe Ultimate, the only one here that also reads handwriting. As phone apps, PlayScore 2 (MIDI on its paid plans) and Opuscan (pay per page). Free: Audiveris, open source for Windows, macOS and Linux, which writes MusicXML that you then convert to MIDI. ToMIDI runs in a browser and charges credits per page. All of them work best on clean printed music, and every one needs a proofread.

Not with this scanner: every page costs a recognition fee, so scans use credits, and the cost is shown before you start. There are free routes. Audiveris is free desktop software that writes MusicXML. And if the score already exists as MusicXML, exported from MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale or Dorico, MusicXML to MIDI converts it free in your browser, with nothing uploaded.

A page usually takes about 30 seconds, sometimes up to a minute, and longer scores are read partly in parallel, so they don't take much longer. The converter shows each step as it goes. You don't have to wait on the page: leave, and the scan keeps going; reopen the page in the same tab, or upload the same files again, to get the result at no extra charge.

Yes. Piano music on a grand staff is one of the layouts optical music recognition is built for, and both hands come into the MIDI. Dense passages with many voices, cross-staff beams or small ornament notes deserve a careful listen before you download, and the MIDI editor fixes anything that slipped through.

Yes. A music score to MIDI conversion keeps each instrument part, with its name, so a string quartet or a band score arrives in your DAW with its parts apart. Crowded orchestral pages are the hardest case for recognition, so check them bar by bar.

No. Handwritten and hand-copied music and guitar and bass tablature are not supported, and a page with no notation on it (lyrics only, a cover page) comes back as no music found. If you can play or sing the music, record it and use piano audio to MIDI or voice to MIDI.

It depends on the page. Clean printed music, good scans and sharp, flat photos give the best results; faint, skewed, shadowed or heavily marked pages and very dense scores give more mistakes. We publish no accuracy percentages. That is why the converter shows the recognised score beside your page and plays it: you catch errors before the MIDI goes anywhere.

To our server, which holds them in memory only while it sends them to Flat (flat.io), the music notation company whose optical music recognition service reads the pages. Its developer documentation (read November 2026) says uploaded files are not used to train its models and that jobs are kept for 30 days unless deleted; we delete the job as soon as the result comes back, or as soon as it fails. The recognised MusicXML is kept on our server for 24 hours, for your account only, then erased.

Scans use credits per page, and the converter shows the cost for your pages before you start. If a scan fails, or you cancel it while it is still queued, the credits come back, and if fewer pages are read than were held, the difference is refunded. Uploading the same files again within 24 hours reopens the earlier result without a new charge.

We cannot answer that for you, and this is not legal advice: it depends on the piece, on what you do with the MIDI and on where you live. One thing is clear: the notes of a composition are still that composition, so its copyright carries into a MIDI file made from it. Convert scores you own or are licensed to use. For music that is free to use, IMSLP and the Mutopia Project collect scores in the public domain or under free licences; check the licence shown for each edition.

Download the .mid and drag it onto an instrument in FL Studio's Channel Rack, onto a MIDI track in Ableton Live, or into the Tracks area of Logic Pro, and accept the tempo import. Each part arrives as its own track; give each one the sound you want.

Tempo: a metronome mark on the page becomes the MIDI tempo, but a word like Andante has no number, so the file falls back to 120 BPM; set the BPM yourself. Instrument: a MIDI file carries notes and a suggested General MIDI instrument, not sound, and many DAWs ignore the suggestion. Pick the sound for each track in your DAW, or render the file with MIDI to MP3 to hear it with sampled instruments.

Both, if you can: they come from the same reading of your sheet music. MIDI is for playing and producing: every DAW, sequencer and MIDI player opens it. MusicXML is for notation: it keeps spelling, lyrics, chord symbols and layout, so a notation app can show the page again. If you plan to print, edit the MusicXML; if you plan to produce, use the MIDI.

Yes: JPEG, PNG, WebP and the HEIC photos an iPhone takes all work. On a phone, the converter can open the camera for you, or use the phone's document scanner if it has one (it flattens and crops the page). Photograph one page per shot in good light and keep the staves straight. The sheet music scanner page has more photo tips.

Audio to MIDI listens to a recording and estimates which notes were played; sheet music to MIDI reads the notes printed on a page. If you have the printed music, reading it is the more direct route. If all you have is a recording, use our audio to MIDI converter instead.