Finding Free Sheet Music- Part 1
Find free sheet music online to play on the piano, organ, or any ban
Dec 16, 2006
Next to free audio music files, downloading free sheet music is another very popular pastime for musicians on the Internet. The biggest problem is finding the music that you want, for the instrument that you play, AND have it be legal. You probably won't find the latest and greatest pop music in sheet music form for you to download for free, but if you know where to look and what to look for, you can still find some fairly good sources for legal, free sheet music.
In most cases, the free sheet music that you find on the Internet is public domain music that has an expired copyright. All original classical music works by pre-20th century composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, etc. are most likely in the public domain now, according to the United States Copyright Law. When you find free sheet music on the Internet by these or other classical composers you are going to be downloading either a scanned image of an original piece of sheet music or a digitally recreated copy of the original music created in a music editor such as Finale or Sibelius. By law, once a piece of music goes out of copyright, anyone can do anything they want to with a piece of public domain music, as long as they are using the original music as the reference. In other words, if a person takes a piece of public domain music and arranges it in some way that new piece of sheet music is now copyrighted and cannot be edited without the permission of the arranger. You can only edit or change the original composer's sheet music.
Well known free sheet music web sites are found all over the Internet. Some have a better selection of music than others, with piano music being the most prevalent. Other instruments can be found as well, but the sheet music they contain is very limited. Consider the following web sites as a good starting place to find sheet music for your chosen instrument:
8notes.com- A well organized and decent sized collection of music for all instruments including brass, woodwinds, strings, percussion, and guitars. They also allow the upload of custom written sheet music if you want to share your creations with the world.
free-scores.com- More difficult to navigate and not as easy to download as 8notes, but this site contains many references to external sheet music sites that 8notes misses.
sheetmusicarchive.net- Organized only by composer, this archive contains PDF format scans of original sheet music by most major classical composers. You are limited to two downloads per day unless you wish to purchase the entire archive on CD.
For more information visit PART 2 of this article.
