Finding Free Sheet Music-Part 2
Free Sheet Music That The Search Engines Miss
Doing a search for free sheet music will produce dozens of sites, all with the same basic selection of classical music. Consider trying out these useful sites instead!
When you do a web search for free sheet music you will be given a list of the big, well optimized, free sheet music web sites. What you often will not find are some very useful and well regarded web sites that house free sheet music that is written by actual music teachers and living professional musicians. Most of the free sheet music that you will find on the first few pages of a web search are made up of classical music for which the copyrights have expired (see Part 1 of this article for more information on copyright and the legal status of online sheet music). They float to the top of the search list because they work very hard to target their pages to fit the keywords that people search for. Most musicians and music educators are not actively trying to select keywords to draw in traffic, they are spending their time writing good music! Free sheet music by lesser known and living composers can be every bit as good, most people simply don't consider it when looking for something to play.
Free Sheet Music Sources:
Sibelius Music - Sibelius is one of two of the major music notation software vendors. They have a dedicated part of their web site called Sibelius Music that allows composers to publish sheet music for people to download or purchase. Not all of the sheet music here is free, but it is very reasonably priced, and often far below the cost of buying sheet music in a store. Sibelius also has a plug in that allows you to view the music and print the music directly from the web site in full, high quality resolution rather than having to print from a fuzzy jpeg.
Finale Showcase – Finale is the other major software provider that dominates the market for music educators alongside Sibelius. Unlike Sibelius, music downloaded from Finale Showcase requires you to download a free copy of Finale Notepad, the free version of their popular music notation software. You can download the music from Finale Showcase for free (in most cases) but must then open it in Notepad in order to print.
Bandfolio.com - Bandfolio has a smaller but still useful selection of free and low cost sheet music that you can download for your personal use. Unlike the software sites mentioned previously, Bandfolio provides most of its free sheet music in Adobe PDF format. They even have full length 25 page plus method books including full conductor's scores available for free. The quality of the downloaded PDF files is quite good and the music writing is also quite acceptable.
For more information about finding free sheet music visit Part 1 of this article.
