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Pizzicato 3.4 now available! Draw your melodies on the staff, create your own synthesized sounds, use the full quality orchestral sound library, work in the global view, combining the best of Pizzicato in one window, as well as other new features,...

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Anne Cadart, Choir Conductor (France) - "My main interest in Pizzicato is to write polyphonic music, so as to increase our repertoire. Now that I can use this software, it is wonderful!"
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Scan And Modify Your Music

With SharpEye, you can scan scores of all types (including Early music) and transfer them in Pizzicato. You can modify, transpose, listen to, arrange or print them in some clics. The principle is that the scanning frees you up of the encoding work

You may download the SharpEye software at:

http://www.visiv.co.uk/installsharpeye2.exe

Once installed, this software may be used freely during one month. You can test it even with Pizzicato demo, scan your music and import it in Pizzicato.

SharpEye only works on Windows. For Mac users, there is another software, of which a Mac OS X is expected soon. See the editor's site at:

http://www.musitek.com

The Various Steps

If you do not possess Pizzicato yet, download the demo version 3 at www.arpegemusic.com/demo1.htm and install the software by double-clicking on the downloaded file.

Download SharpEye at http://www.visiv.co.uk/installsharpeye2.exe and install that software by double-clicking on the downloaded file. Press 5 times on the "Next" button, then click on "Finish".

With your scanner, scan a music score of one page for your first test. Scan it in black and white, in TIFF or BMP file format. To have a correct result, the original score must be of good quality. A handwritten score will not produce good results. The lines of the staves must be clearly visible in the scanned music sheet.

Start SharpEye (Start, Programs, Visiv, SharpEye 2).

Select article "Open image..." from the "File" menu and select the previously scanned music sheet (Tiff or Bmp file format).

Select article "Read" from the "Read" menu. The conversion begins. A percentage shows the progression of the work, in the low part of the window. Wait until the score appears in the main window.

In the "Options" menu, select article "NIFF Options...", check "Graphical" and validate.

Select article "NIFF... Save" from the "File" menu and give a name to your score (with the NIF extension).

Start Pizzicato (Start, Programs, Pizzicato 3, Pizzicato). At startup, select the Professional demo mode if you do not have a license yet.

In the "File" menu, select "Import a NIFF file..." and select the NIF file previously saved. Only Pizzicato Professional 3 has that function.

Validate the dialog box that appears and your score is displayed. You can listen to it with the little yellow triangle button, in the tool bar of the window.

The above procedure explains the main points. The quality of recognition of music symbols may not be perfect and according to the complexity of the score, there will be some little errors to correct. But in general, the time saved as opposed to writing all the notes yourself is quite important.

For more information, see the Pizzicato lesson on using NIFF and MusicXML files at http://www.arpegemusic.com/manual33/EN561.htm

MusicXML, NIFF Or MIDI Files ?

Only Pizzicato Professional 3.3 and 3.4 import MusicXML files. Pizzicato Professional 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 import NIFF files. Those files contain not only the notes, but also several symbols and the page setup of the original score.

If you use Pizzicato Pro 2 or Beginner 2 or 3, you may however also import scanned sheets of music from SharpEye (or SmartScore), but you must then use a MIDI file to do the transfer. The MIDI file contains all the notes but not the way in which the measures are assembled in a page. Use the same procedure as above, but replace NIFF/MusicXML by MIDI. The time saved is still an advantage, because the notes are written.

Summary

With the combination of SharpEye (or SmartScore) and Pizzicato, you may scan your sheets of music, modify them and listen to them. The scanning makes it easy to obtain a new enchanting score without spending time to encode it.

==> Why delay ? Get SharpEye!

Order SharpEye today by clicking here

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