Koontown Koffee Klatsch (1904)...J.P.Greenberg

[Steve Harrison]

This is my take on a tune that was recorded by the Ossman/Dudley Trio in 1906.

It's not a facsimile of the Ossman version, I've put it in a different key, Em/Gmajor, and added my own bits and pieces. The melody in the first part sounds as though it could be an eastern European/Jewish folk tune which has then been developed into a lively two step. A klatsch is a German word for a social gathering. The score and midi are in the library...Steve.

Here is the original recording which has been cleaned and de-hissed by Shawn McSweeny..thank you Shawn !

Ian

KOONTOWN KAFFE KLATSCH by Ossman Dudley Trio 1906

[Trapdoor2]

Thanks Shawn, just what I needed to know. I tried other OCR programs (like SmartScore) but I ended up spending more time in cleanup than I did simply keying in the score directly.

Yeah, piano scores tend to scan/OCR beautifully. Esp. later ones printed on slick paper.

[Hal Allert]

I have had difficulty with Photoscore not wanting to let go of the high G that denotes a 5th string note. Sometimes it won't let me go any further. I like the Photoshop idea. I have been using SmartScore for a long time. I can bring a TIF file into it and clean it up like you were mentioning. If I open a JPG in IrfanView and re-save it as a TIF, Photoscore says it should be re-scanned as a greyscale TIF. Do you have that problem, Shawn?

Shawn McSweeny said:

Hi Marc

Photoscore has its limitations. Remember "garbage in, garbage out", from early computer days? The simpler and better the quality of the original, the better the result.

As well, many of the older banjo scores are quite busy visually, which is a problem-think Morley solos crammed onto a single page. I generally spend time in Photoshop cleaning up a score jpg file, erasing scan  noise, left hand fingering numbers, right hand positions etc, paring the score down to the dots and dynamics to minimize distractions for the OCR.  It can be tedious. And the Photoscore file will still have errors needing correction.

I have had better luck with piano accompaniment scores as they are not burdened by a lot of melody notes or fingerings.

[Shawn McSweeny]

Hi Hal

 In my experience, Photoscore tends to either ignore the flagged G or misread it as two voices : one is a sixteenth note G because of the 5th flag above the staff and the other a G whose duration is set by the real stem, usually within the staff. So before using Photoscore, in Photoshop I erase the flags along with just about everything else.

The notation TIFs I'm familiar with are usually very high contrast scans of old originals; not at all OCR-friendly. In prepping TIFs, I convert them to grey-scale JPGs (300 dpi) in Photoshop and edit. In your case, try just using the grey-scale JPG if SmartScore will accept it. Resaving it as a grey-scale TIF will just expand the file size.

Most scores run more than one page, so when the score edits are done, I save them as a multi-page pdf for use in Photoscore.  It crunches through the whole document, giving me a multi-page score, usually with lots of misreads to be corrected before using the file in Sibelius. With practice, it gets easier to make the corrections, but it still takes time.

[Hal Allert]

Thanks Shawn. SmartScore only reads TIFs, thus my reason for converting them. I will try PhotoScore again though. I hope I can pick your brain again.

Shawn McSweeny said:

Hi Hal

 In my experience, Photoscore tends to either ignore the flagged G or misread it as two voices : one is a sixteenth note G because of the 5th flag above the staff and the other a G whose duration is set by the real stem, usually within the staff. So before using Photoscore, in Photoshop I erase the flags along with just about everything else.

The notation TIFs I'm familiar with are usually very high contrast scans of old originals; not at all OCR-friendly. In prepping TIFs, I convert them to grey-scale JPGs (300 dpi) in Photoshop and edit. In your case, try just using the grey-scale JPG if SmartScore will accept it. Resaving it as a grey-scale TIF will just expand the file size.

Most scores run more than one page, so when the score edits are done, I save them as a multi-page pdf for use in Photoscore.  It crunches through the whole document, giving me a multi-page score, usually with lots of misreads to be corrected before using the file in Sibelius. With practice, it gets easier to make the corrections, but it still takes time.

[Shawn McSweeny]

Hi Hal

No problem.

Hal Allert wrote :

I hope I can pick your brain again.