The Art of Converting Paper to PDFs

We’ve looked at four general categories of tools that a musician will need to read music digitally, what I call the “4 C’s”: Computer, Content, Container, and Controller. When it comes to the second C – Content – the type of music you work with will greatly determine the means with which you will get your music into your digital-reading computer of choice. There is a wealth of sheet-music content available on the Internet for instant download – no need to wait for the mailman to deliver to your house or favorite music store. For many musicians, this will be the first place to look, and oftentimes there’s no need to bother with paper versions. We’ll touch on a number of popular online resources for digital sheet music in a variety of genres in a later chapter.

But perhaps you are a musician using paper sheet music that can’t be found in any digital format anywhere on the Internet. Maybe you are working with paper versions that are marked up with precious fingerings and special instructions that are more valuable than the music itself. In that case, you will need to learn the art of a “5th C”: Conversion. By conversion, I mean hardware and software tools used to convert your paper music into digital files that can then be read and worked on in your reading app or program of choice.

There are basically three steps in the conversion process:

1. Scan
2. Process
3. Transfer

Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.

Scan

To scan is to convert a physical document into a digital format. Basically, you are creating a digital photo of the document, using a hardware device called a Scanner. Scanners come in all shapes and sizes, and are sometimes part of an “all-in-one” office machine that can print, fax, make copies, and make a perfect double soy latte (I’m kidding about that last feature). The type of physical music you need to convert will determine the kind of scanner you will want to work with. Here are three general types of scanners and the types of music they are best suited for:

1. Flatbed – these are scanners that have a glass surface on which to place your music, and a lid to prevent you from being blinded by the scanner’s light. Flatbeds are best suited for music books and bound collections, and usually require a connection to a laptop or desktop computer to process and transfer the digitized images.

Brother MFC-400CN scanner printer

2. Sheet-fed – these are scanners that are much more compact and tend to look like plastic rolling pins. Sheet-fed scanners are best suited for single sheets of music, since only one page can be fed into the scanner at a time. These types of scanners also require a connection to a laptop or desktop computer, although as of this writing, there is a new sheet-fed scanner called the iConvert Scanner that has a slot for your iPad to sit in and receive the scans directly.  More info HERE at AMAZON

iConvert Scanner for iPad

App – Believe it or not, smartphone cameras are becoming good enough to create sharp, legible scans of music. You’ll need the latest smartphones with high-resolution cameras (the latest iPhones from Apple work beautifully, as well as the latest offerings from the various Android smartphone manufacturers) and apps like TurboScan for the iPhone or CamScanner for the Android phones. Scanning apps are best for smaller songs or scanning on the fly when you need to digitize your music in a pinch and don’t have access to the other kinds of hardware scanners. Keep in mind that if you’re trying to scan pages from a bound book that you’ll have to deal with the curvature of the binding, especially if the book is brand new.

iPhone Apps for Scanning

• Scanner Pro
• Genius Scan
• DocScan

Android Apps for Scanning

• Tiny Scanner
• CamScanner
• Droid Scan Pro PDF

Scanning with a smartphone

Process

Every scanner and scanning app will have different settings and options, so you’ll have to refer to their instructions for the specifics on processing your scanned page images. We’re going to want to aim for the following goals:

1. Create a universal file that can be read on as many computers and programs or apps as possible
2. If you are scanning more than one page for a song, then this file will need to be able to have multiple “pages”
3. Make the file as legible as possible
4. Make sure the file is as small as possible to ensure that it loads on any computer quickly and that the page turns (if necessary) are fast
5. Make sure that the file name is descriptive enough for easy cataloging and searches

Thanks to a company called Adobe, the most universal file format since 1993 has been the Portable Document Format, or PDF for short. PDF files were designed to be read universally on every computer, which is why I’ve been able to keep up with the rapid changes in computer technologies since my conversion to a paperless lifestyle in 2001. All my scanned music consists of PDF files, and as I mentioned before, the remarkable thing is that the very first music files I scanned are still as pristine looking as the day I created them, as opposed to their physical counterparts, which have sadly yellowed and in many cases already started to crumble. PDF files have the ability to contain multiple pages – some of my music, after all, is 50-100+ pages in length. Most scanners these days have the option to directly create multi-page PDF files. If not, don’t despair; here are some software options for converting image files created from your scanner into multi-page PDF files:

iCombiner for Mac

This is a great program that does just what its name describes, and it’s free to boot!  You can take any kind of image or document file, drag them into iCombiner’s program box, rearrange the pages in any order you like, press a button, and spit out a single multi-page PDF file. 

http://download.cnet.com/iCombiner/3000-2094_4-190014.html

PrimoPDF for Windows

PrimoPDF is a free program that will give you the ability to virtually “print” image and document files into a single multi-page PDF.  Unlike iCombiner, you can’t mix and match different types of files (images with Word document files, for example), but as long as you work with a single file type you can convert almost anything into a multi-page PDF. 

http://download.cnet.com/PrimoPDF/3000-18497_4-10264577.html?tag=mncol;1

To make your scanned pages legible and as small in file size as possible, you will want to look for options on your scanner to scan in black and white. Scanning in color will make your file look great, but you’ll have to deal with a much larger file size, which can choke the loading and page-turning speeds, especially if you’re using a computer with a slow processor (like the original iPad 1). Grayscale, while smaller than color formats, still creates a file size that’s unwieldy, especially if your song is more than two or three pages in length.

You will also want to set the scan DPI to either 150 or 300. DPI stands for “dots per inch,” and represents the resolution or how fine the image quality of the scan will be. Photographers and printers want a high DPI, but for music-reading purposes the extra dots are unnecessary. In fact, if you find that your staff lines are getting broken up with your scans, you may want to try a DPI as low as 75 – the scanning software will tend to consolidate fine lines better at lower resolutions. Since every scanner and scanning app is different, you’ll want to experiment with a few different DPI settings to find what is optimal for your reading purposes and computer performance. Keep in mind that the higher the DPI, the larger the file size, so you’ll want to find the right balance between legibility and performance (loading and page-turning speed) for your needs. Most of my music is scanned at 300 DPI, so feel free to use that as a benchmark.

Finally, you’ll want to come up with a naming convention for your files that best suits your particular musical needs. As a classical collaborative pianist, my primary title needs are as follows:

1. Composer name (usually just the last name will suffice, or in special cases – like with the Bach family – the last name and the initial of the first name. And perhaps the middle name as well, right, J.C.? or was it J.S.?).
2. Title of the piece. If there is no title, then I’ll indicate what type of piece it is (Sonata, Concerto, etc.) followed by a number (if there are multiple versions of the same type of piece) and key signature. (See #4 below for an exception to this order).
3. Publisher’s catalogue info – these include general indications like Opus and Number (Op and No for short), or unique catalogue references in the cases of particular composers, such as J. S. Bach (BWV number) or Mozart (K number).
4. Since I work with such a wide variety of instrumentalists, I need to include the primary instrument for which the piece was written. If the piece is for my own instrument (piano), I won’t bother, but if it’s for another instrument, in many cases, I’ll actually put the instrument name before the title.

Here are a few examples of some of the PDF file names I use in my library:

Chopin Ballade No 1 in G minor, Op 23

Bach, JS Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042

Massenet Meditation from Thais for Violin and Piano

Did you notice something in the above titles? I tried to avoid using periods and special non-alphanumeric symbols, such as a period after “No” or “Op”. In computer language, periods are generally used to separate between the name title of a file and the extension that indicates what sort of file it is. For example, the full file name of the Chopin Ballade is actually:

Chopin Ballade No 1 in G minor Op 23.pdf

Note the “.pdf” at the end – that tells the computer that it is looking at a PDF file, and will assign the appropriate compatible program to open it.

I also try to avoid symbols like ; : # " ? ! ( ) & + This came as a result of working with some pretty old Windows programs that didn’t have the ability to include those symbols as naming conventions. Since I want to be able to read my files as universally as possible, just to be safe I generally try to stick with using only alphanumeric characters.

As you can gather, classical music is quite complicated, hence the convoluted naming convention. For folks who play more popular genres like jazz, rock, pop, or worship songs, you may not need anything more than the title of the song or, perhaps in some cases, the name of the band or artist that made the song famous as well. Determine what works best for you, and think about the information you would need to be able to call up the song on your computer quickly and easily.

Seem like a lot to absorb? Never fear, in practice, it’s actually not very difficult at all. Once you have your equipment and settings established and know how you want to name your files, you’ll find yourself to be a Master of Conversion in no time.