Scan and import sheet music from a PDF or photo
Last updated November 4, 2026
Turn a PDF, scan, or photo of sheet music into a fully editable score.
Flat uses AI-powered optical music recognition (OMR) to read the music printed on the page and rebuild it as real notation you can play, transpose, arrange, and share. You bring the sheet music, Flat does the typing.
How it works
- Start a new score and choose to import a PDF.
- Flat scans each page and recognizes the staves, notes, and symbols.
- Your music opens as a fully editable score. Press play to hear it right away, then review, edit, transpose, and arrange.
To import your PDF, go to your Score Library, click New and then Import PDF or photos.
In the window that opens, drag and drop your file or image into the upload area, or click the area to browse your files. The window also shows how many credits you have left.
Scanning is available for teachers with an active paid or renewed subscription. It isn't included in a free trial.
Scanning uses one credit per page, and each teacher gets a yearly credit allowance. See scanning credits and limits for what your plan includes.
Scanning credits and limits
Each page you scan uses one credit, taken when the scan starts. A ten-page PDF uses ten credits, and a single photo uses one. Every teacher has their own yearly allowance, which depends on your school's plan:
| Plan | Credits per teacher | Resets |
|---|---|---|
| New Flat for Education plans | 350 per year | On your renewal date |
| Legacy plans | 100 per year | On your renewal date |
Unused credits don't carry over to the next year. Your account admin can check which plan your school has on the Billing page. Each scan also has to fit within the file and page limits.
How to check your remaining credits
Go to your Score Library, click New and then Import PDF or photos. Your remaining credits are shown at the top of the upload window, for example "345 credits left".
Your balance is personal: each teacher sees their own credits, not the school's total.
On a Legacy plan and running low? Schools that switch to a new plan get 350 credits per teacher each year.
What Flat can read
Flat's OMR is built for standard Western music notation that has been engraved: music typeset by notation software or professionally printed. That covers most sheet music, method books, parts, and lead sheets.
Works well
- Printed or digitally engraved sheet music, including scans and photos of printed pages
- Solo parts, piano and other grand-staff music, and multi-instrument scores
- Lead sheets with chord symbols
Not supported
- Handwritten or hand-copied music
- Tablature (guitar/bass tab), not yet supported
- Pages with no standard notation (text-only pages, lyrics-only sheets, cover pages)
Which notations are supported?
Within engraved Western notation, Flat recognizes a wide range of symbols, including:
| Category | What Flat recognizes |
|---|---|
| Clefs | Treble (G), bass (F), alto and tenor (C) in all positions, octave-shifted clefs (e.g. treble 8va/8vb, bass 8vb), and percussion clefs, including clef changes within a piece and parts that print the clef only on the first line |
| Key signatures | All key signatures, from 7 flats to 7 sharps |
| Time signatures | 2/2, 3/2, 4/2, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8/4, 9/4, 3/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 10/8, 11/8, 12/8, 13/8, 14/8, 15/8, 3/16, 6/16, 9/16, 11/16, 13/16, 15/16, and 17/16, plus common time and cut time |
| Note values | Whole, half, quarter, 8th, 16th, 32nd, 64th, 128th, 256th, 512th, and 1024th notes, as well as breve, long, and maxima; with augmentation dots |
| Rests | Regular rests and multi-measure rests |
| Tuplets | Triplets and other ratios (for example 3:2, 2:3, 5:4, 6:4, 7:4, 7:8, 9:8, and more) |
| Beams | Standard beams, including partial beams, hooks, custom beaming patterns, and beams across rests |
| Pitches | The full pitch range, including ledger lines |
| Chords & voices | Chords, and multiple voices on a single staff |
| Accidentals | Sharp, flat, natural, double sharp, double flat, courtesy (cautionary), and microtonal (quarter-tone) accidentals |
| Ties & slurs | Ties and slurs |
| Grace & cue notes | Grace notes and acciaccatura, plus cue (small) notes |
| Dynamics | ppp, pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff, fff, plus sf, sfz, fz, fp, pf, rfz, sfp, sfpp, and sffz |
| Hairpins | Crescendo and decrescendo hairpins |
| Articulations | Staccato, staccatissimo, tenuto, accent, marcato (strong accent), detached legato, soft accent, spiccato, stress and unstress, breath marks, caesuras, and jazz marks (doit, falloff, plop, scoop) |
| Ornaments | Trill, mordent, inverted mordent, turn, inverted turn, and wavy line |
| Tremolos | Single-note tremolos and between-note tremolos (1 to 4 strokes) |
| Fermatas | Fermatas |
| Arpeggios | Arpeggios |
| Glissandos & slides | Glissandos and slides |
| Octave lines | 8va, 8vb, 15ma, and 15mb |
| Tempo | Metronome marks (with BPM) and gradual changes (rit. and accel.) |
| Barlines | Normal, double, final, repeat (start and end), and heavy-light barlines |
| Repeats & navigation | Repeat endings / voltas (1st through 8th), Segno, Coda, Da Capo, Dal Segno, To Coda, and Fine |
| Measure repeats | Single-bar repeats (%) and rhythm slashes |
| Noteheads | Standard, X, circle-X, cross, diamond, triangle, inverted triangle, square, slash, slashed, back-slashed, and hidden noteheads |
| Multi-staff instruments | Piano and other grand-staff instruments (up to 7 staves) |
| Percussion | Percussion staves and noteheads |
| Chord symbols | Chord symbols and chord charts, recognized as editable chords, not just text |
| Harmonics | Natural and artificial harmonics |
| Performance techniques | Fingerings, up-bow and down-bow, snap pizzicato, stopped notes, open strings, and thumb position |
| Pedal | Sustain pedal down, up, and change |
| Text & lyrics | Lyrics, rehearsal marks, and text annotations |
Latin-script languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and more) are recognized by default. Lyrics in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Cyrillic-script languages (Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian) are recognized based on your account language and the regions where those languages are spoken.
File and page limits
Each scan has to fit within these limits.
| Limit | Current value |
|---|---|
| Pages per scan | 50 |
| Maximum file size | 100 MB |
| Scans running at the same time | 10 |
| AI credits per page | 1 |
| Accepted file types | PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, GIF, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF |
Getting the best results
If it's hard for a human to read, it will be hard for Flat to read too. The cleaner and sharper your source, the better the conversion.
Recognition suffers most from:
- Low-resolution or blurry files
- Bent, warped, or curved staves (common when photographing a book near the spine)
- Faint, partially erased, or heavily marked-up notation
- Scanning artifacts, shadows, or skewed and rotated pages
- Scores where the number of staves changes from one system to the next
Also import a single piece per file, so Flat doesn't try to merge unrelated staves: keep one instrument per file for a solo part, and don't combine a full score and its separate instrument parts in the same file.
We improve recognition regularly. See the latest PDF & photo scanning updates.
Take OMR further
Automate OMR imports. Building an app or automating a workflow? The Flat developer API runs the same OMR engine programmatically: send PDFs or photos, follow progress, review the detected instruments, and import scores or export MusicXML at scale.
Frequently asked questions
Can Flat read handwritten sheet music?
No. Flat's optical music recognition is trained on engraved notation - music typeset by notation software or professionally printed - so handwritten and hand-copied manuscripts are not supported. A clean photo of a printed page works; a photo of a handwritten part does not.
Why does my scanned score have mistakes in it?
Recognition quality follows source quality. Blurry or low-resolution files, pages photographed near a book's spine, faint or marked-up notation, and skewed or shadowed scans all cost accuracy. Everything Flat produces stays fully editable, so check the result against your original and correct anything that came through wrong.
Why does my scanned score show system break marks I didn't add?
Those small ↵ "return" or "enter" arrows are system breaks. Flat keeps the page layout of your original: every line of the PDF becomes a line in the score, with a system break at the start of each one. They are layout markers, not music, and don't play or print. To let Flat lay the score out on its own, remove the system breaks.
Can I scan guitar tablature?
Not yet. Flat recognizes standard Western notation, including chord symbols and chord charts, but tablature is not supported by the scanner. You can still import tab as a file - Guitar Pro and PowerTab files import directly. See how to import score files.
How many credits does a scan use?
One credit per page, taken when the scan starts, so a ten-page PDF uses ten credits and a single photo uses one. A single scan can contain up to 50 pages, so split longer documents into smaller files.
How many credits do I get?
Each teacher gets 350 credits per year on new Flat for Education plans, or 100 per year on Legacy plans. Your allowance resets on your school's renewal date, and unused credits don't carry over.
How do I check how many credits I have left?
Click New in your Score Library, then Import PDF or photos. The upload window shows your remaining credits at the top, for example "345 credits left". Each teacher has their own balance, which resets to your yearly allowance on your school's renewal date.