We asked for your questions, and you sent so many that one episode couldn’t hold them. This is part one of two — and part one is brought to you by two letters: A and I. That wasn’t the plan; it’s just where the mailbag pointed.Philip Rothman and David MacDonald take on the growing expectation that artificial intelligence should be able to turn a scan, recording, or generated track into finished, usable sheet music. Why is that still so difficult? And where can AI genuinely help musicians and music preparation professionals today?The discussion ranges from optical music recognition and audio transcription to proofreading, house styles, sample libraries, score following, and the potential for language models to communicate directly with notation software. Along the way, Philip proposes the “Gould test” as the music preparation equivalent of the Turing test.Underneath it all are larger questions about the value of expertise, the role of human judgment, and where responsibility lies when the technology gets it wrong.The rest of the mailbag — the questions that have nothing to do with AI — is coming next month.Products mentionedNotation softwareDorico (Steinberg)Sibelius (Avid)MuseScore Studio (Muse Group)Flat (Tutteo)StaffPadScanning and optical music recognitionNoteVision (Muse Group)Soundslice sheet music scannerNewzikPlayScore 2SmartScore 64 Pro (Musitek)Opuscan (Tutteo)Audiveris (open source)Audio transcriptionKlang.io and Transcription StudioSongscriptionBasic Pitch (Spotify) (open source)Magenta MT3 (Google) (research)Playback and vocal synthesisNotePerformer (Wallander Instruments)Cantai (Turing Opera Workshop)AI arranging and orchestrationArrangementLabsNotationAIScoreSynthOrchidea (IRCAM / HEM / UC Berkeley)Score following and page turningTomplay Smart Page TurnSmartleggioPiascoreSampleSumo Music FollowingAntescofo (IRCAM)MCP bridges (community projects)mcp-musescoredorico-mcp-server (also on PyPI)Music generationSunoNYC Music Services / Notation CentralPDF Batch UtilitiesOther tools mentionedName Mangler / RenamerClaude (Anthropic)Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodesDirectly mentioned or closely related:Half-time report: what’s new, and a call for your questions (previous episode — the call for these questions)You have questions, we have answers (2025 listener questions episode)Asked and answered, part 1 (2023, the first listener-questions episode)Scanning the current OMR landscape (Steve Morell’s six-product comparison, December 2024)A snapshot of music scanning apps — and picturing the future (companion podcast)Dorico and The Rite of Spring (Stephen Taylor, January 2021)The “rite” way to copy old scores into new software (podcast with Stephen Taylor, February 2021)NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with Klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul and the companion podcastNAMM 2026: An Avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak and the companion podcastNAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivityMarie Chupeau and the human side of Newzik’s artificial intelligence (podcast, November 2021)From zero to slice: Soundslice takes on optical music recognition with AI (podcast with Adrian Holovaty, December 2022)Dorico 6: Proof positive (review — the Proofreading panel)Dorico 6.0.22 extends proofreading capabilities (the “ignore issue type” feature)Behind “Behind Bars” with Elaine Gould (podcast, July 2023)Cantai now sings straight from Dorico (review)Richard deCosta gives your score a voice (podcast, May 2026)NotePerformer reverses course (the removal of third-party Playback Engines)NotePerformer updated to 5.1.0Comma sense: Command Search in SibeliusNAMM 2025: Imbibing and transcribing with Oriol López Calle and the companion podcast (AI-assisted transcription inside a professional service)PDF Batch Utilities get a major rebuild — and a brand new a