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Guide

Practise your own sheet music

Menu paths checked 11 September 2026

Scoreflection grades the music you bring rather than a catalogue of its own: open a score, play it, and every notehead is marked. That only works if the score is a file the app can read note by note — and that is where most people get stuck. This guide covers where such a file comes from and how it gets onto your phone.

Which files work

Scoreflection imports MusicXML (.musicxml or .xml), compressed MusicXML (MXL, .mxl), MNX and LilyPond (.ly). The format is recognised from the file's content, so a download that lost its extension still opens.

MusicXML is the one to ask for. It is the exchange format every current notation program can write, and it is what a teacher can send you by email. A PDF is not a score file: it is a picture of the page, with no notes in it an app could compare your playing against. See If all you have is a PDF.

On an iPhone or iPad, compressed archives are not supported yet. Export uncompressed MusicXML where the program offers the choice, or unpack the .mxl or .zip and pick the MusicXML or MNX file inside it.

From a notation program

MuseScore Studio

Choose File → Export and pick MusicXML as the format. The export dialog lets you tick which parts to export, or combine all parts in one file. For practising a single part, exporting just that part gives you a cleaner page to play from.

Dorico

Choose File → Export → MusicXML. In the dialog, choose between compressed (.mxl) and uncompressed (.xml) — take uncompressed if you practise on iOS — tick the flows you want, and choose a destination folder. You can also export each layout as a separate file, which is the quick way to one file per instrument part.

Sibelius

Sibelius exports MusicXML directly, alongside MIDI and PDF; the export formats are on the File tab. Avid's Reference Guide has a section on exporting MusicXML with the options for your version.

Finale

MakeMusic stopped developing and selling Finale on 26 August 2024. There are no further updates, and it can no longer be bought, but it keeps working where it is already installed. Scoreflection cannot open Finale's own files, so a piece kept in Finale needs to reach MusicXML before it can be practised here.

Flat

Use the export/download icon and choose MusicXML. Flat offers both compressed and plain MusicXML; plain is the one that also works on iOS.

Noteflight

Use the Export button and choose MusicXML. Noteflight supports compressed MusicXML (.mxl), which Android opens directly; on iOS, unpack it first.

Free public-domain scores

If the piece is old enough to be out of copyright, someone may already have engraved it as a file the app can read.

  • OpenScore — more than 1,200 nineteenth-century songs in the Lieder corpus, plus string quartets, released under CC0. Each score can be downloaded as MusicXML from its page on MuseScore.com.
  • The Mutopia Project — over 2,000 pieces, each with its LilyPond source alongside the PDF and MIDI. Scoreflection imports the .ly file directly. Each piece states its licence: public domain or a Creative Commons licence.
  • IMSLP — the largest library of public-domain music, but what it holds is mostly scanned PDFs. Look the piece up there, then search OpenScore or Mutopia for the same work as a file.
  • The Scoreflection community library — a shared collection of public-domain scores inside the app, ready to play. It needs an account and a connection to download from.

If all you have is a PDF

Three ways, in order of how good the result is:

  1. Find the same piece as a file. For public-domain music, try the sources above first. For anything a teacher gave you, ask whether they have the MusicXML — the notation program that made the PDF can export it in a minute.
  2. Scan it. Scoreflection can read a photo or PDF page into notation. That feature is still under development, and it is the one part of the app that uses our server: the page is sent to be read and not kept afterwards. The result is a machine transcription that will contain mistakes, so check it against the original before you practise from it — see AI transparency.
  3. Enter it yourself. The notation editor, part of the Practice plan, can record from a MIDI keyboard or the microphone and transcribe what it hears, which you then correct.

Onto your phone

From the phone's storage: open your library, tap +, and pick the file from your phone or wherever you keep it (a download, a cloud drive, an email attachment you saved). It is read on the device and is ready to play straight away. Importing is free, with no limit on the number of scores, and needs no account.

From a computer: a score you open in Scoreflection in a browser can be sent to your signed-in account, and the phone collects it the next time you open the app — or immediately, if you tell it to check now in settings. This one needs an account.

If it will not import: check the format first (see Which files work). If it is MusicXML, MXL, MNX or LilyPond and still will not open, please send it to us — a file that a program wrote and Scoreflection cannot read is more often our bug than a bad file. Contact.

Then play

Reading, playback and the metronome are free and need no account. Being listened to and graded — every notehead marked correct, wrong, missed or mistimed — is the Practice plan, which needs you to be signed in; the listening itself runs on the phone and works offline. More in the FAQ, and how this compares with other apps on the comparison page.

Sources

Product names are trademarks of their owners; Scoreflection is not affiliated with any of them. If a menu has moved in a newer version, tell us and we will update this page.

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