Sheet Music Player

The Sheet Music Player opens your own scores and takes the page-turning off your hands. In The Ultimate Piano a PDF scrolls and turns its pages while you play. A MusicXML score goes further: it follows you note by note, waits where your hands are not yet, and afterwards shows which notes you caught — one hand at a time if that is where the work is.

It reads MusicXML, the standard interchange format for sheet music exported by notation software like MuseScore, Finale, and Sibelius.

On this page

How to Open the Sheet Music Player

Open it from the Play menu in the header (look for Sheet Music Player), or press Ctrl+Shift+S (Cmd+Shift+S on Mac). If one of the other players is already open, click the Sheet Music Player tab next to MIDI Player, Audio Player and Video Player — the same row of tabs takes you back.

The player has two tabs at the top: MusicXML and PDF. Pick the one that matches your file.

Which Tab Does What

The two tabs are not the same feature with different file types — they do genuinely different jobs.

The reason for the split: a MusicXML file contains the notes, so the player knows what should sound and when, and can follow you and grade what you play. A PDF is a picture of the page — the app cannot know which notes are printed on it, so PDF mode is about reading comfortably: scrolling, page turns and markings.

MusicXML Player — Score Follow With a Moving Cursor

1. Load a Score

Click Library to load a MusicXML file (.musicxml, .xml, or compressed .mxl) from your computer. The score renders as a clean, multi-page grand staff with the title, part names, bar numbers, and time signature.

The Library button is also where you save scores to your Cloud Library — both MusicXML and PDF files — so you can organize them in folders and reopen the exact same score wherever you sign in.

2. Press Play

Hit Play and a cursor moves through the notes in time. Use the transport controls to navigate:

You can also click any note in the score to set where playback starts — handy for drilling a tricky passage. Hovering over a notehead lights up the matching key on the keyboard without making a sound, so you can check where a note sits before you play it. If you have no score at hand, the demo piece Ode to Joy is built in.

3. Play Along

Switch on Play Along to practise at tempo: the music plays and the cursor moves while you play the same notes on your keyboard or MIDI piano, together with the cursor.

Or switch to Wait Mode: instead of moving at a fixed tempo, the cursor waits on each note until you play it. Take a tricky passage as slowly as you need — the music never runs ahead of you.

Score Follow & Scoring — Real-Time Feedback

Click Practice with Scoring — the target button at the right end of the controls, after the metronome — to have your playing graded as you go. It becomes available as soon as a score is loaded. The player listens to your MIDI or on-screen keyboard input and checks each step against the score.

Practice options:

• Which hand? — Practise the Right hand (melody), the Left hand (bass), or Both. Only the hand you choose is graded and highlighted.
• Play my part — Also hear the notes you are practising played back (you will hear them doubled). Turn it off to mute your part and play it yourself.
• Scoring — Grade what you play and show a results screen at the end.

Each note step is rated as Perfect, Timing off, Partial, Missed, or Wrong notes. When you finish, a results screen sums it up — from Keep Practicing to Excellent — much like the Ear Training results.

This works for whole songs, not just structured exercises — load any MusicXML and get a score for how accurately you played it.

Bar Loop — Drill a Section

Click Loop, then drag across the bars you want to repeat. The player loops just that range so you can practise it over and over. The loop resets cleanly on every pass. Clear it when you're done to play the whole piece again.

PDF Sheet Music — Read & Annotate

Switch to the PDF tab to open a PDF score. This mode is built for reading from the screen while you play.

Viewing & Navigation

• Four ways to view the document: 1 Page, 2 Pages side by side, Half (top of the page, then the bottom), or Scroll for one continuous column
• Multi-page with Previous / Next page buttons
• Fit width or Fit page, plus Zoom in / out from 25% up to 400%
• Navigate by keyboard: Page Up / Page Down, Space, or the arrow keys

Hands-Free Page Turning

Press Play in PDF mode and the score moves on its own: the page scrolls steadily while you read it, then turns as soon as its time is up — so you never lift your hands off the keys.

How long a page stays on screen is set in the Tempo & measures panel, next to the Play button. There are two ways to decide it, and you pick one for the whole document:

• Time — you say how many seconds a page is shown. Works for anything, including chord charts and lyric sheets that have no bars to count.
• Score — you enter the tempo, the beats per bar, and how many bars are on the page. Each page then lasts exactly as long as its music. Bar counts are a property of the printed page and never change, so practising slower takes a single edit: lower the tempo, and every page follows.

Either way the value belongs to one page, so a short final page can be shorter than the rest. If every page holds the same amount, one click applies it to all of them. The panel always shows the resulting seconds for the page you are on.

Your settings are remembered for that score. Set them once, and the piece is ready to play the next time you open it — and for a score kept in your Cloud Library, they travel with the file, so it behaves the same on every device you sign in to.

Bluetooth foot pedal support: Any BLE pedal that emulates a keyboard (AirTurn, Donner DBM-1, PageFlip, and generic Bluetooth music pedals) works out of the box — no setup in the app. Pair it via your operating system's Bluetooth settings and set it to send Page Up / Page Down.

Annotations

Click Annotate to mark up the page — fingerings, reminders, circles around tricky bars. Drawing works in the 1 Page view, where every mark has one clear page to belong to. The drawing tools open as a small palette that floats over the score, so they are always right next to what you are marking. Drag it by the dotted handle if it sits over something you need to read; it stays where you put it.

The palette holds select / move, pen, highlighter, eraser, text and shapes (rectangle, circle, line, arrow), plus colour, stroke width, undo and redo (the last 50 steps), and clear. The tool you are drawing with is highlighted, so you can always see what a click will do. Close the palette with the × when you are done.

To mark a bar the way a teacher would, pick Circle it (hand-drawn) and drag a frame around it: a loose, hand-drawn circle appears that fits the frame, whether it is wide or tall. When you finish a text, click next to it or press Esc — the text stays selected so you can drag it into place.

Annotations are saved per page and can be hidden or shown again at any time, even while you play. For a score in your Cloud Library they are stored with the file, so your markings are on the page again when you open it somewhere else.

Use Cases

• Practising a piece (MusicXML) — Load the file, loop the hard bars, and turn on scoring to track your accuracy
• One hand at a time (MusicXML) — Practise the left or right hand separately with per-hand scoring
• Learning to read (MusicXML) — Watch the cursor connect the notation to the sound while you follow the score bar by bar
• Sight-reading (PDF) — Open a PDF and let it scroll to keep a steady pace
• Gigging from PDFs (PDF) — Read charts on screen and turn pages with a Bluetooth foot pedal

Related: Play MIDI files with falling notes in the MIDI Player. Explore chords and scales in Learning Mode. Keep a steady tempo with the Metronome.

Frequently Asked Questions

What file formats does the Sheet Music Player support?

Two kinds of file, one tab each. The MusicXML tab opens .musicxml, .xml and compressed .mxl files, the format notation software like MuseScore, Finale and Sibelius exports. The PDF tab opens ordinary PDF sheet music — scans, downloads, anything you would otherwise print. Which tab you use decides what the player can do: see the comparison above.

Can it tell me if I'm playing the right notes?

Yes, in the MusicXML tab. Click Practice with Scoring and the player checks your MIDI or on-screen keyboard input against the score in real time, rating each step as Perfect, Timing off, Partial, Missed, or Wrong, then showing a results summary at the end.

Not in the PDF tab. A PDF is a picture of the page, so the app cannot know which notes are printed on it — there is nothing to compare your playing against. If you want feedback on a piece you have as a PDF, look for a MusicXML version of it.

Can I loop a few bars to practise them?

Yes, in the MusicXML tab. Click Loop and drag across the bars you want to repeat. The player loops just that range and resets cleanly on every pass, so you can drill a passage as many times as you like. The PDF tab has no bar loop — it turns pages instead.

Can I turn PDF pages without using my hands?

Yes. Press Play and the pages scroll and turn on their own. How long each page stays is set in the Tempo & measures panel: in Time mode you enter the seconds per page, and in Score mode you enter the tempo, the beats per bar and the number of bars on the page, so the player works the seconds out from the music itself — change the tempo and every page re-times at once. Values belong to a single page, so an unusually short page can be given its own length, and one click copies a value to every page. Any Bluetooth foot pedal that sends Page Up / Page Down (AirTurn, Donner DBM-1, PageFlip, and similar) works out of the box too — just pair it through your operating system.

Do my markings and page timings follow me to another device?

For a score kept in your Cloud Library, yes — annotations and the page-timing settings are stored with the file, so the score opens the way you left it wherever you sign in. A PDF you opened straight from your computer is remembered on that device only, since there is no stored file to attach the settings to.

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