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Topic: Treble to Bass clef from PDF files (Read 3387 times) previous topic - next topic

Treble to Bass clef from PDF files

Is it possible to copy a PDF file with music in it (on a treble clef) to NoteWorthy Composer to change it into a bass clef to print out?

Re: Treble to Bass clef from PDF files

Reply #1 –
Short answers:

Manually: yes

Automatically: no

Re: Treble to Bass clef from PDF files

Reply #2 –
If you have a scanner, scan in the printed music, save in tiff format and use a music OCR program such as Sharpeye (www.visiv.com) to convert into a midi file. Then use Noteworthy to open the file and make the adjustments.

Depending upon the length of piece and skill on the keyboard, it may be simpler to simply play in the music if you have a keyboard. Noteworthy has sequencing capabilities.

Re: Treble to Bass clef from PDF files

Reply #3 –
A PDF document cannot normally be edited in Acrobat Reader, or even the full Acrobat. But PDF files can be opened as drawing objects in programs such as Adobe Illustrator (and some others, I believe) if you own one of them. You would then ungroup the image, select the treble clef, delete it, and enter a bass clef from a suitable font. You would still need a music font installed. Or, you could manually draw a bass clef.

Another strategy, if you don't have a drawing program or a scanner, but do have a good paint (image) program: Open your PDF file in Acrobat Reader, magnify it to 100% or whatever looks best. Use the image select tool, and select the entire page (one page at a time). Copy to the clipboard. Paste the image, which is now a bitmap, into a suitable program. There, erase the treble clef and pencil in a bass clef.

If you have GSview (Ghostscript) you can open the PDF file then export or print it as an image, to be edited in your image program.

But in general, I believe the advice given by the others is more to the point.

I assume you are aware that when you change the clef, the music is NOT merely lower on the same scale notes. The center-line of the treble clef is B. But the center line on the bass clef is D.

Re: Treble to Bass clef from PDF files

Reply #4 –
Note for Steve's reply:

SharpEye supports tiff's only "principally". It actually works with b/w bmp's, which must be very very clear for the program to be able to recognize.

I have some PDF extracted bmp's and the program doesn't see anything.

I'm afraid this music ocr thing is not much different than wav to midi utopia.