music conversion software

[Bob Stuckey]

Hi Miguel Arana-Catania and Music Notation followers,

     

     I have been working on a notation which I call ID-Head but I do not have skills to automatically produce scores from traditional notation. I would welcome next stage advice and comments.

      It is called ID-Head in  that the identity of the note is contained in the note head.There is nothing new about this: Musescore offers beginner's a notehead option which can be set to a lettername or Fixed  or movable solfege.  However I feel it is trying to fit in too much information, often using two letters (initial and first vowel) for note ID. Here's an example of a pentatonic tune that beginners could play on the black notes of a glockenspiel if they could more easily read the notes.

Heres how it might be written in ID-Head, first in movable solfa, written in lower-case italic:

The coloured stave lines allow the note ID to jump out while the black notes are below given their own fixed notes names VW  XYZ written in upper case. X is the tonic and V the dominant.

Although F# is the tonic of this tune the listener experiences no sharpening of it or any other notes in the melody (unless they have perfect pitch and came down on the side of F# rather than Gb). The black notes have been allowed to be tonic of a tune since around 1550 in the work of blind lutenist Gorzanis yet so far they have not aquired independant names. Perhaps the names Va Wu-Xe Yu Ze will grant them independance. They were devised in discussion with Richard Parncutt . psychoacoustician at Graz University, made from the last 5 letters of the alphabet with added vowels to contrast with the surrounding solfege whether fixed (upper case) or movable (lower case italic).

    Va    Wu       Xe   Yu   Ze             va   wu       xe   yu  ze

Do   Re   mi  Fa   So   La   Si        do   re   mi  fa   so   la  ti     

    To contrast with their neighbours  Xe is pronounced as in Greek (a voiceless hiss from the back of the tongue, and Ze is pronounced as in Spain ( like the English word they).

      From these examples you can may have noticed the adaptation of conventional rhythmic symbols summarised below:

              whole-note              half-note       quarter-note   eighth-note

              semi-breve              minim            crotchet          quaver

Fortunatey the "black note" initials combine distinctivley with various "white note" conventions.

     Transatlantic

       V W   X Y Z     

      C D E F G A B

          German 

        V W   X Y Z  

      C D E F G A H

        Mediterranean

          V W   X Y Z  

         D R M F S L $  

In the following map, below the dotted line are countries that favour the fixed solfa note names (La Si Do.etc) while above the line Transatlantic names ( ABCetc) are prevelant.This usage tends to extend globaly into the ex-colonies. 

     Si is named after Santa Iohannes (Saint John) who closes the hymn from which the other solfege syllables get their name. By using the dollar sign for Si we can compress this history into a single symbol. Luckily F has the same meaning in Transtlantic, German and Mediterranean.However the meaning of D is different according to context. It could be made more distinctive by placing the second letter of Do within the initial or when short of space, a dot.

The underlying philosophy of ID-head is that sharps and flats are very real experiences which we can leave to the listener as we do when music gets played. Here is the opening of a piece by Wagner, Wolfram's Song from Tannhauser written in three versions:Fixed Solfege, Transatlantic and movable solfa.

i) fixed solfege

The key signatuere is no longer needed for the right notes to be played but it may be still useful to include as a reference. Its inclusion could be an option. the ID-Head is only presented when the note is first sounded: tied notes are written as conventional noteheads.

 ii) Transatlantic 

When in fixed solfa or Transatlantic shared notes between left and right hand are more apparent in ID-Head than in traditional notation, especially for the beginner.

iii) movable solfa

This form gives the melody and harmony from the viewpoint of the tonic, giving their role within the key.

Popular melodies re often written in lead sheet form, that is the melody with chord symbols with optional lyrics. Popular melodies are often written in lead sheet form, that is the melody with chord symbols with optional lyrics. Here is the tune Quizas, Quizas, Quizas written in various styles of ID-Head;

i) fixed solfa

ii) Transatlantic

iii) movable solfa

   Singers like to choose the key that suits their voice. A lead sheet in movable solfa  is a kind of harmonic analysis can then be played in any key. 

    ID-Head bypasses the elitist grammar of treble and bass clefs, key signatures and accidentals yet allows the beginner  to pick up the rules of time signatures, rhythmic notation, dynamics and articulation so they can ease into traditional notation later. 

     A public domain software is needed that translates from conventional to ID-Head to be freely available to publishers and teachers.The user should be able to choose their favourite names for the white notes , ABC.., AHC..., L $ D..etc while the black notes names VW-XYZ would be common to all. 

Do you have expertese in this field? If so could you raise a quote in two parts, first for the lead sheet conversion second for the piano scores? If not, can you direct me to someone who has the expertise?

There are some more discussions on this topic on my website under the page ChromaticSolfege.

With best wishes

Bob

bobstuckey.com

 

[John F]

Hi Bob,

I'm happy to give you some feedback. Good job. The first thing to say is "different strokes for different folks" - I think all sorts of different approaches to alternative notation (AN) can be useful to some people. I think yours has the benefits of being a stepping stone to traditional notation (TN), particularly in the 'lettername' system, because it adds each letter name to the standard staff notes, altering very little else. It's also a neat little trick that tied notes are easily distinguished by not having their names on them!

I'm not sure how useful that is for either versions of solfege, but I'm not well versed in that area. I imagine that the fixed version is basically using different names for the notes (i.e. some version of the Mediteranean nomenclature), which may well be ideal for those countries using D, R, M... or whatever. I think moveable-Do systems are good for simple tunes that don't modulate to different keys, but presumably will involve some risk of confusion in more complex music, where you either have to consider the scale fixed according to the "home key", or switch to a new one when the key changes.

So my feeling is that the best use of the letter names in heads is the initial letter A-G and V-Z (if you choose the latter set for the black notes). This also solves the issue you first mentioned with MuseScore trying to squeeze two characters into each head (unless they try to put sharps and flats in the black notes - that would need some tweaks that perhaps someone here can help with; I wouldn't know how).

For me, there's another issue with letters on the staff without the heads, which is that I can't easily see where the centre of the letter is, and therefore which line/space of the staff it's on. I think this undermines its usefulness as a beginner's hint towards learning the notes of the staff.

In addition, there is a problem (from TN itself, I'm afraid) that "the notes of the staff" doesn't really mean much, since there are several common clefs that move all of them! If we learn piano/keyboard instruments, we tend to think there are just two (and that they stay on the top or bottom staff of the grandstaff, which they don't), but singers and other instrumentalists use others, as I'm sure you know. Limiting the remit to keyboard and/or simple tunes mitigates that problem, and there's nothing wrong with that approach.

I am, regrettably, still working on my AN after years, and one of the things I realised through it all is that we AN designers have to decide which parts of musical tradition we intend to keep and which to overhaul. Some will rename all the semitones as a number sequence, for example. Like you, I keep the A-G, because I figure nobody is likely to give those up in a hurry, and I just use new letter names for the black notes. For a long time I favoured VWXYZ as well, but I'm not sure, because discussion of intervals and chords commonly uses 'V' and 'v' as the 'five'.

The main reason my system is taking years, by the way, is that I'm writing a complete Windows application, including facilities for transcribing MusicXML and MIDI files, as well as having some basic note editing on screen (and possibly playback of pieces with piano sounds), and that set me off down all sorts of rabbit holes, like trying to understand how MusicXML codes the information I want to extract. I hope it'll be published this year, but then I keep hoping that every year!

One thing I really don't understand is the need to devise new syllables for VWXYZ. They are already pronounced, vee, double-u, eks, why, and zed/zee, just as we have ae, bee, see, dee, eff, and gee. Perhaps you meant to do that just for the solfege names, but that reminds me that there are already solfege names for all twelve semitones, both with lowered and raised 'accidentals', indeed several different systems.

All the best,

John

[John F]

... oops, missed out 'ee'!...  Looking again at your score examples, I think the difficulty I mentioned of quickly recognising which line or space a note is on is probably just because those are hand-written. With a good font, where they're centered would be clear (at least for capitals - lowercase letters are complicated by having different heights).

Cheers,

John

[Bob Stuckey]

Hi John, Thanks for for the feedback. I have a busy few days but will read carefully in get back.

bob

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the forum of the Music Notation Project (hosted by Google Groups).
To post to this group, send email to musicn...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Music Notation Project | Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/ffbc50f6-391b-4a76-8768-6d7dd151d19bn%40googlegroups.com.

[Bob Stuckey]

Hi John F ,

Many thanks for your feedback. I'll pick up a few points. 

There are three approaches to sharps and flat.  In he Mediterraean  fixed solfege tradition singers who I have met are trained to sing the shaarps and flats without changing the vowel. so Re would be pronouced the same whether it was Re sharp  or Re flat in the score. Here,s an example of some Italians singing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yb7Wa0Esths

Note that in the subtitles when the Sol got sharpend, as often happens in the minor key, their pronounciation stayed the same. They were singing in fixed solfege so I would have prefered if the inital letter had been upper case. None the less, it's a fun video.

 In contrast the movable solfage crew , follwing the Curwen and Kodaly method, change the vowel to convey sharpening or flattening ,as shown in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtQ2vbDzhXc

With this method you end up with 17 mote names while the listener will hear only 12 notes. In this video the notes are presented as fixed with upper case intials  and the background of the piano keyboard so in this instance appear fixed but these are the syllable used by the Curzen & Kodaly method when applied to various keys i.e. they are usually movable.

  The Chomatic Solfege aproach is to give the sharps and flats their own names and allow the listener the experience sharps or flats acccoring to context. Their names contrast with their immediate neighbours (within the reach of three guitar frets) and are rewarding to sing, whether fixed (upper case) or movable (lowercase italic) is illustrated below. The letters in brackets can be included as wished. If you sing choose your starting note on the circle and try singing the chromatic scale up (clockwise) and down with help of a piano or guitar if necessary

As tonic of the minor key la is in the prime position, for a change. Usually the major tonic gets to be top dog   The listener may hear sharpening or flattening of according to  the musical context.. They may experince none if the piece begins on Va as the tonic (eg in Bach's Well Tempered Klavier nos 3 and 4). 

The addition of VW-XYZ may help to trace the various modulations of jazz standards. Pianists accompanying jazz singers must be ready to track the rapid modulations through various keys. A useful example is the chord sequence of All the things you are (which I showed . to iReal Pro as an alsternative font to Nashville aka Number Notation). The keys vistied  are listed using the shorthands ^ for major and - for minor:

           Bar 1 la-, Bar 4 d^, Bar 7 m^, Bar 9 m-, Bar 12 s^,Bar 15 t^, Bar 23 y^, Bar 24 la- etc

 

I agree that placing letters on the staff is not always ideal, especially in lower case, but it is a compromise, using the traditional staffs as a useful background on which to display the contours and rhythms of a melody.. The letters could be placed on any other staffs in use, eg the C clef used by the viola, but those are only read one clef at a time. It  is in piano music that the ID-Head  would be most useful to take away the double-puzzle presented by the Treble and Bass clefs while using them as convenient backgrounds, perhaps temporarily, until the learner can grasp the principles of note identity, key signature and accidentals.

In your last pararagraph you ask why the black note name VW- XYZ need to have vowels. Perhaps for playing and instrument thay are not needed but for singing solfa they are essential as in this example which illustrates how the syllable contrast with their neighbours. Do you recognise it?

It starts on the minor tonic.         la yu sososo xe fa mi   mi wu re doredo ti do re do ti

In an ideal program you would select a piece of traditional notation for conversion and then choose between various ID-Heads:

Transatlantic      AZBC...

German              AZHC...

Mediterranean    LZ$D...

moveable solfa with the freedom to chose any note as major or minor tonic eg.

                          mfxs if F was chosen as the major tonic

                          xsyl  if  Bb was chosen as the minor tonic

In all these modes chord symbols would also  be converted.if they were oringinally in the piece.

How could such a program be made freely available?. Perhaps it might a good Phd project.

Well, John ,  I hope that answers some of your questions

 I hope you make manage to get your own AN up and running and can circulate some examples

 

Bob

On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 at 21:33, John F <j.r.fr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[John F]

Hi Bob (and all),

Thanks for those details - very interesting. As I say, solfege is not something I'm knowledgable about. I probably wouldn't have ever thought of it at all if it wasn't for The Sound of Music, the sound track of which accompanied my childhood. Lately, I've used the major scale degree names occasionally as an aid to improving my audiation (ear training), but I don't find it particularly useful (or I'm too lazy to stick at it enough), and I've never learned any of the intermediate semitone names. For that purpose - improving my audiation - I prefer not to name anything, but focus instead on trying to clarify the intervals kind of in my mind's eye (or using names like "dominant" or the degree number). I imagine tunes almost entirely with reference to C. So whatever tune I'm thinking of (or chord intervals), I "see" the notes in the scale of C major, or for a minor key, C minor (not Am). Everyone thinks differently about music and finds their way differently. I glaze over with symbolic representations, so I'm afraid your text-based versions and chord progressions are like hieroglyphics to me!

I have to work at deciphering your semitone names, too, but my answer is "Carmen, I think".

Returning to your original question about software to make these transcriptions, there's no easy answer. One way would be, as you say, to try to get students interested (or their university departments or professors), but then you would probably have to specify in quite a lot of detail exactly what steps are needed, so the students can work from that design to create the code, or you'd have to work directly with them over a period of time directing the process.

Another route might be through some kind of plugin for MuseScore or another notation software - probably the easiest route if you wanted to leave the background staves as they were and annotate them with letters or other kinds of noteheads. I understand some of the other AN developers here have done something like that with their own fonts for notes, so perhaps they can give you pointers on it (it's a bit quiet round here at the moment, eh?).

If you had money to throw at it, you might employ a programmer, then do the same, directing them in what you want coded, either developing a new application or plugin. I'm not sure how much money that would require. Or if you think this has commercial potential, I suppose there might be various business routes - getting investment of money and/or programming time with the intention of sharing profits.

You might also code it yourself. Have you any programming knowledge? It could be a steep learning curve if not, but would give you control over the whole process. Some languages aren't too difficult to learn, and I sense from your approach that you have a logical mind.

First of all, you might do well to think about the details of what you want to achieve. You describe choosing a piece of music, and having it translated into some form of staff annotated with various types of letter names, but one of the tricky issues is what kind of source is the chosen piece? The industry standard for coding TN is MusicXML, and of course MIDI files are ok for giving the essential information of note pitch, onset and duration. MusicXML codes for all the sharps and flats and many other bits of information for the printed page. MIDI ignores sharps and flats (AFAIK), just giving a numerical pitch number (easier to deal with, in many ways). MIDI also codes the onset time and stop time for each note, measured from the beginning of the whole piece (or movement), so you have to calculate bars and durations from other data in the headers about the time signature (which can, of course, change).

There are 'parsing' routines available in various languages to extract/translate either of these into various other forms, but you have to know how to use them. I use a freely available midicsv program to make the complicated numbers in midi files readable, but it still then needs more number crunching of the CSV (comma-separated value) file; I am writing my own parser for MusicXML, which was probably a bad decision!

I think, for what you want, a plugin for MuseScore, etc., would be much easier than writing an app. In the whole subject of ANs, actually getting music transcribed into the new system is one of the most troublesome things, but programs like MuseScore do all that behind the scenes, so the idea of a plugin is to tweak enough parts of how they operate to give you what you want on the screen or printed pages.

Cheers,

John

[Miguel Arana-Catania]

Hi,

Thanks for your question Bob. ScaleShift ( https://scaleshift.app/ ) has been designed to cover this software requirement for alternative notations as easily as possible. There are currently 4 notations implemented ( https://scaleshift.app/notations ), and the system can include any additional notations proposed by anyone.

To add a new notation, it only needs a LilyPond script that defines the transformations from traditional notation to the new one. The current scripts are published here https://github.com/scaleshift-scores/scaleshift_conversion_scripts 

E.g.

https://github.com/scaleshift-scores/scaleshift_conversion_scripts/blob/main/clairnote.ly 

https://github.com/scaleshift-scores/scaleshift_conversion_scripts/blob/main/twinnote.ly 

https://github.com/scaleshift-scores/scaleshift_conversion_scripts/blob/main/muto.ly 

https://github.com/scaleshift-scores/scaleshift_conversion_scripts/blob/main/chromaticlyre.ly 

If you ever design your LilyPond script, I'll be very happy to include it as one of the notations in ScaleShift.

With all best wishes,

Miguel

---

From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John F <j.r.fr...@gmail.com>
Sent: 10 January 2026 12:27
To: The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [MNP] Re: music conversion software

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/b3a435d0-b5f2-490f-989f-bb1d62ceefe4n%40googlegroups.com.

[John F]

Hi Miguel, Bob, and all,

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has tried the ScaleShift website for uploading and transcribing music to one of the four notations. I would try it myself, but I'm hesitant about signing up and sharing my data. (If anyone wishes, they can reply privately rather than here to the group). I'm not intending to doubt the system, Miguel, just curious. It sounds like a potentially useful function.

On the other hand, it has to be said that - for the purposes Bob was asking about - it involves learning how to create a conversion script for Lilypond. That doesn't seem like a trivial matter, from what I see when I read one.

So it seems to me the validity of this method depends on how difficult it is to learn how to write the relevant script(s) for Bob's notation(s), and how accurate the transcription of the MusicXML or PDF files is.

Miguel, are the example scores in the public domain section of your website actually transcribed using ScaleShift scripts, or are they acquired from elsewhere? They include all manner of different symbols for note durations, clefs, etc., so presumably these have to be coded in any script that requires them.

Pardon my ignorance, I'm not clear at all on how ScaleShift works. Does the website return pages of score, e.g. PDFs, or a Lilypond file to use in Lilypond, or both/something else?

John F

[Miguel Arana-Catania]

Dear John,

All public scores appearing in ScaleShift (in this link:  https://scaleshift.app/public-scores ) have been converted using the website itself. The website takes a score (in MusicXML or PDF format), and returns a PDF of the score in the alternative notation (e.g. the scores appearing in the previous link). 

The returned scores are stored in the user's private space, but they can also show them publicly, as in the previous link.

MusicXML works best as an input file format. PDFs are more challenging and do not always work. Images will soon be allowed too, to allow users to just take a photograph of a score to transform it. 

Regarding the implementation of new notations, I agree that creating the LilyPond script may take some work. However, this is much easier than designing new plugins or specific apps for each alternative notation. LilyPond is free and open, so anybody can download it and test their own scripts. And for many notations, ChatGPT may be helpful enough to create those scripts even for people with no programming knowledge.

From a development perspective, the goal of the app is to help combine efforts on alternative notations. While there are multiple notation proposals, there was no single app that allowed non-technical users to transform their traditional scores to alternative notations. In my opinion, this was a must to achieve the goal of making alternative notations used by music learners and musicians in their everyday lives. Besides that, having a common script repository for multiple alternative notations may help to combine the scattered efforts in this regard. 

All best wishes,

Miguel

---

From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John F <j.r.fr...@gmail.com>

Sent: 11 January 2026 14:17

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/c2a5a81b-b78b-4c7f-aa75-e0027dc781f4n%40googlegroups.com.

[John Freestone]

Hi Miguel,

Thank you for that explanation. It is indeed a great resource - those transcriptions are amazing. I'm impressed by your work, and also by the abilities of Lilypond itself to make such radical transformations. I would agree (as far as I can judge) that this route is probably easier than plugins or full applications.

All the best,
John

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/LO3P265MB189806448771BADF76E001A7D281A%40LO3P265MB1898.GBRP265.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Miguel Arana-Catania]

Thank you for your very kind words John!

---

From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Freestone <j.r.fr...@gmail.com>
Sent: 12 January 2026 15:35
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/db32596c-d567-44a2-a6d2-5bf2e5a3ffd2%40gmail.com.

[John Keller]

After looking at all the transcriptions, I have to say they all would need extensive editing to be at all useful. 

What program would they be able to be edited in? As is it would put people off ANs Im afraid!

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/LO3P265MB1898594F9D8FDE5242398D52D281A%40LO3P265MB1898.GBRP265.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Miguel Arana-Catania]

The platform currently generates a PDF output, but it will also produce a MusicXML output to allow editing with any music software. 

The conversion scripts are also published as open source to enable continuous development and improve conversions over time. Especially for challenging scores, as is the case with some of the scores currently published on the website.

Best wishes,

Miguel

---

From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Keller <expres...@gmail.com>
Sent: 12 January 2026 21:32
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [MNP] music conversion software

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/55BE301D-3707-486A-9889-8286A04A881F%40gmail.com.

[Bob Stuckey]

Hi Miguel and All

As I understand things, the transformation process from TN to an AN needs to be encoded in Lilypond before it can be listed on Scaleshift.

Unfortunately I have no experience with Lilypond and it may be hard for me, now 80 to learn. If anyone thinks they can write the Lilipond conversion software for ID-Head, as I outlined on Jan, I would be interested to receive a quote in recogition of the expertise, part i for  lead sheets and part ii for piano music.

Bob

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/LO3P265MB189806448771BADF76E001A7D281A%40LO3P265MB1898.GBRP265.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Joseph Austin]

I just tried using ScaleShift to convert Bach Prelude 1 from both pdf and mxl to Clairnote. The pdf was a disaster: missing notes, random line breaks inside measures--one line had just a single eighth rest! 

The MXL looked OK but I'm not sure it was Clairnote: the white/black notes followed the TN duration convention, not the odd/even split I was expecting.

Joe Austin 

---

From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Bob Stuckey <bobst...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2026 10:11 AM
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CAGAAJyH1tutv9RvtCU%3DUR6G8ZYrPz3jDAwuqc5UujEJxCeoUYQ%40mail.gmail.com.