Have old scores on MuseScore been removed?

• Feb 26, 2022 - 20:26

Hi:
At least 8 - 9 years ago, when MuseScore was released in a much earlier version, I discovered it, downloaded it, and over time, created at least 5 different scores using it. I no longer have those scores on my computer (I don't know where they went). I have the printed sheet music, but not the actual score file.

When examining MuseScore.com online, I have searched for those songs, but have found none of them. Either I never uploaded them to musescore.com when I completed them almost a decade ago, or I did upload them but they have since been removed from the site.
So, I have two questions:

  1. If I have the printed paper sheet music to a score created 8 years ago in musescore, what is the best way to upload it into musescore now? I suspect I could scan it into my computer, try to save it as a pdf file, and hope the pdf conversion website will convert that scanned file to a musescore file. I have my doubts because scanned copies are not good quality, and that conversion program always leaves problems, since it works better than nothing but makes many mistakes. Alternatively, is there a way to scan it, print it as an MS Word file and somehow upload it to the musescore website? (I know I can re-enter the five songs into the program one note at a time, but that will take me lots of time)

  2. Did Musescore ever have these old song files and for some reason, delete them from the site over time? If so, are they gone forever?

Thanks in advance for your help!
Frank


Comments

As mentioned, musescore.com doesn't delete files, the ones I posted over 10 years ago are still there.

As for recreating ones you've lost in general, no matter how good a print is, the AI involved in turning a picture of music into an actual score is still not sophisticated enough to make the process faster of getting it into MuseScore than simply re-entering the music. And there is no way to get a score into musescore.com without getting it into MuseScore first.

it would be worth spending some time searching your hard drive for the files, though, if it's still the same computer. Unless you deleted them, they are still there. All operating systems provide tools for finding files, you want to search the entire drive for files with a name ending in MSCZ.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc & JoJo:
Thanks for the reply. I have done an exhaustive search for those old Musescore files, and they are nowhere to be found. In 8 years, I've gone through two computers, and probably somehow deleted them, rather than saved them on CDs or DVDs (before flash drives, external drives and the cloud). I now know they are not on musescore.com.

I did manage to just scan one file, convert it to PDF and get the AI web program to convert it to an MSCZ file, but as you said, it is full of errors that must be fixed. That said, I am simply NOT fast enough to enter all the notes manually, reading from printed sheet music. I am barely able to read which note I'm looking at, and have not yet learned all the keystroke shortcuts for entering notes. When I've tried to enter notes manually, I'm lucky to advance just one two stave measure every 1 - 2 minutes. In a song with over 70 measures, that is a lot of time. So, I guess I will have to slog through fixing the PDF generated score 1 measure at a time. Most of the errors are in timing. At least the notes seem to be correct and in the right key.

Perhaps a year from now, as I keep practicing note reading, I will be able to enter them fast enough to beat a flawed PDF score.

Thanks for the advice and comments.
Frank

In reply to by fsgregs

I think you will find you have it backwards - fixing the sorts of corruption and worse error caused by PDF import requires a ton of epetise, and a ton of time. It's *way( harder than entering music from scratch, particularly if you're not an expert user, because these errors will often require great ingenuity and use of more esoteric features of the program in order to fix.

FWIW, even at two minutes per measure, you could get a 70-measure piece done in a couple of hours. That doesn't seem unreasonable at all, but of course, with practice, you'll get faster.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc:
Thanks as always. Fortunately for me, when I scanned the sheet music of one of my five scores and had the website convert its PDF file to a musescore file, it produced 80 measures that had a total of only 9 timing/measure errors. All the rest looked OK in notes and timing. While I could try to fix the timing errors with weird commands, I can more quickly fix them by creating 9 NEW measures, and copying just the notes from each of the 9 error bars and pasting them in per the right timing, then delete the damaged bars. While it might take me perhaps a minute per bar, that is only 9 minutes to fix the score. Then, I have to add expression comments, dynamics marks, pedal marks, etc. but at least in this case, it will take me no more than 30 minutes to get this particular piano score ready for correct use. Whether this occurs also with my other four scores is to be seen, but ...
Thanks again.

Frank

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