Converting from PDF - Please help!?

• Jun 12, 2020 - 23:26

Hi - I am fairly new to Musescore. I want to create drum tab. I have done a few and am doing ok with the basics. I have a pdf of drum notation which I tried to import and convert. It has converted it to a MuseScore file brilliantly However, its playing a tune (an awful one!!) How do I convert the notes to be drum tab rather that musical notes? (basically I want to tell it the C the it is playing is not C, but the snare drum)

Hope that makes sense!

Many thanks in advance

Attachment Size
FinalCountdownCPnvertedFromPDF.mscz 26.73 KB

Comments

• Jun 13, 2020 - 22:46

Hi there. Thank you so much for your reply. This is a start. I hadn't even got that far :) I have changed to drum set, and selected standard. However I have noticed that now when I try to correct what hasn't quite worked - I do Fn +N to get the notes up, nothing appears. (I am used to seeing a panel on the bottom where you can select the notes to insert) So I cannot edit the drum set. I will try to attach the original PDF and the resulting file so at least you can see what I am looking at. The open Hi Hat is converted to a note which I believe is G when I changed to drum set as you suggested it moves the notes down to E. When I play the result on Musescore I get some strange sounds. Not all the bass pedal/kick drums sound the same. Perhaps the PDF converter isn't suited to Drum charts?

Thanks again
Vicki

Attachment Size
FinalCountdownCPnvertedFromPDF.mscz 26.73 KB
TheFinalCountdown.pdf 279.19 KB

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• Jun 14, 2020 - 16:25

Hi

Already tried that. Adding a drum set adds a new stave. I can then use note input mode and see the drum notes I ca add manually. But copying and pasting from the original stave where the converted ones are moves the notes to completely different positions. so the note that would represent F in music (bass in drums) moves to position F an octave higher. I wonder if part of the problem is also the converted PDF shows bass clef not treble clef? I also noted that when I tried your first suggestion F10 then click drum set it moved the notes in the first line differently that the second and remaining lines. The first line has a treble clef.

I'm starting to wonder if the PDF converter just doesn't work for drums. Have you looked at my two attached files?

Thanks again for your suggetsions
Vicki

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• Jun 15, 2020 - 07:44

After pasting on the drumset, you'll indeed have to correct the pitches of those notes to match the drumset definition.
This can be done fairly fast by right-clicking a pitch and use the Select > More option to only select notes of that pitch. You can then use the up/down arrows to cycle them through the drumset defined pitches.

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• Jun 15, 2020 - 23:10

Hi

I appreciate your answer. I have had a play, but I cannot see the note I am changing it to (and not input mode shows me nothing), and its giving me odd things like crash symbol sharp of flat, but not just crash cymbal. The time signature I just noticed in the converted pdf is 3-4 when of course I want 4-4 . If I change the time signature to 4-4 the whole thing changes to a really messy muddle. Added to this the fact that MuseScore keeps crashing when I am trying some of these things, I am not convinced it works. Have you ever successfully converted a drum chart PDF to MuseScore? I still have treble clef on some lines, bass clef on others the high hat and snares have been converted to minims rather than crotchet. Ive used your suggestion select method to change them all to crotchets, but then it throws loads of rests in. I am ready to throw it out of the window now. :) :). Have you looked at the files I attached? do you think its converted so badly I am on to a loser here? (This is the first time I have attempted it, so perhaps I should find another one to try)

Thanks again for your help
Vicki

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• Jun 16, 2020 - 09:33

I have not used Audiveris much at all, as manual entry is quite fast for me and most of my transcriptions come from handwritten scores, where it would almost guaranteed fail.
But a quick look at their project issues list reveals https://github.com/Audiveris/audiveris/issues/33 where the main writer states that "Audiveris does not understand drum notation and we lack the human resource to take on such a big task".

Changing to 4/4 is a "mess" because you can already see hidden rests and too long notes at the end of the measures.

Here's how I would "fix" this score. (Keep in mind that I'm not familiar with drum notation).

  1. Use Edit → Instruments to add a generic 5-staff Drumset to the score
  2. Click in the first measure of that new instrument and start note entry mode (shortcut 'N')
  3. In the bottom of the screen, the drum input window opens. Click the Edit Drumset button
  4. Define the notes for the drumset you wish to use (for example circled noteheads for Hi-Hat/Crash cymbals)
    Tip: remove the name from the pitches you're not using, it'll remove them from the input palette and they won't be used when cycling with arrow keys.

Next up is to make all measures contain at least 4 beats. As you'll notice, most of them already do and are larger, this should be fairly quick.
5. Right-click (Ctrl-click on Mac) the first measure and open up the Measure Properties window
6. Change the actual duration from 3/4 to 4/4
7. Press Apply
8. Use the arrow button at the bottom of the dialog to move to the next measure
9. Repeat steps 6-8 to lengthen all measures to be at least the correct duration but only lengthen them
If a measure has a longer duration currently, do not shorten it as it might loose information we still wish to correct at some point in the future. (So leave measure 3 as 5/4 for the time being)

Now is the time to select all of the imported staff and copy and past it onto the drum staff. The highlighting during copy/past also reveals an additional issue about the use of voices by the imported.
Because it wrongly detected the hi-hat as half notes, it used multiple voices to enable having them on the correct beats.
Fortunately for us, the importer did not use voice 4, which we can use as a temporary voice during editing to move all the lower notation into; which will later allow us to force/merge the hi-hat notes back into voice 1.

Time for the pitch correction.
10. Right-click the first note in the drum staff and navigate to Select → More…
11. In the dialog, check the "Same pitch" and "Same staff" options
12. Now use the up or down arrow keys to cycle through the previously defined drumset note pitches until it shows as the note we're aiming for. Use the standard staff visual notation as a reference.
13. Assign the selected notes to voice 4 (if they're not hi-hat/crash) by clicking the corresponding toolbar button (or use the shortcut for it)
Yes, this will create additional rests and clutter; ignore them all for now.
14. Repeat 11-13 for all non-hi-hat/crash notes (so don't touch the half notes yet)

  1. Now to handle those half notes. Again, start by right-click, select → more, same pitch, same staff. But this time also select "same duration". I'm working from measure 4 now
  2. Use the up/down arrows to correct their pitch
  3. Fix the duration of the selected notes by clicking the 1/4th duration button in the toolbar
  4. Repeat 15-17 for all other half notes you see that should be hi-hat / crash

So far, I have not been past measure 9 of the score.
Time for some cleanup

  1. Select the final snare half note of m3 and make it a quarter
  2. Select the full Drumset staff
  3. Open the Selection Filter (F6) and uncheck "voice 4"
  4. Press the voice 1 toolbar button to force all notes of voice 2 and 3 into that.
  5. Re-check the voice 4 checkbox
  6. Select the entire Drumset staff again
  7. Tools → Voices → Exchange voices 2-4
  8. uncheck voice 1 and voice 2 in the selection filter
  9. press delete
  10. restore voice 1 and voice 2 checkmarks and close the selection filter (or don't close it if you don't want to :) )

A quick comparative scan of both staves shows still some wrong pitches in m72-73, m90-100 and m112-113.
By now you should be able to quickly change those as well using the arrow keys.

Now it is time to remove the standard instrument and start focusing on comparing with the PDF.
Everything up to this point, including writing this down took me about 40mins, so that's quite a decent cleanup time for such a score so far
See attached resulting file for everything up to this step. I've performed all of the above steps on the file you provided using the 3.5beta release. It didn't crash once.

Things left to do:
Work measure by measure, comparing the MuseScore file with the PDF (display them side by side, each on half your screen for convenience). Make sure each measure starts at the start of the measure and ignore any superfluous rests. Just make sure that for each measure, no matter how long it is, the first 4 beats are the "real measure".
In some measures you'll likely have to change durations/cut and paste a bit and/or add some notes (such as the pedal hi-hat).

Once you've corrected the entire score. Go over the measure properties of all measures again to change them all to 4/4 actual duration, which will cut out the remaining rests those measures had.
Now apply the 4/4 time signature to the score.

And then you'll have a decent digital version of your PDF.

Attachment Size
306674-FinalCountdownCPnvertedFromPDF_cleanup-stage-1.mscz 36.78 KB

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• Jun 19, 2020 - 18:08

Thank you so much for all the effort you have put in to this reply. I will hopefully be able to find time this weekend to go through it properly and carefully and try it out. I just want to check before I embark on this - are your suggested steps starting directly on the converted pdf? (ie not createing a new MuseScore file and copying and pasting anything?, just working on the result I receive from conversion?)

Many thanks, I will be sure to let you know how I get on!!

Vicki

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• Jun 22, 2020 - 23:00

Thanks for clarifying. Ive started going through the steps. Thanks for making them so nice and clear. So far I've got up to step 17, but as soon as I do this step Musescore crashes and closes. I have rebooted PC, closed everything down and it is still happening. I will try to do some individual notes tomorrow to see if it still crashes. Will let you know how I get on.

Thanks
Vicki

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