Let’s face it… Searching for piano sheet music can be very tedious. We are fortunate to live in an age where we have access to practically millions of sources of information at our fingertips. Ah yes, the Internet. All you have to do is open your favorite search engine, type in the title and composer of your piece of music, hit “search” and voila! Results in less than a second.
Some pieces of music may be harder to find than others. And, unfortunately, it’s not always free. Before the Internet, you had to go to a music store and buy all the sheet music! Today, we don’t even have to leave the house to get free sheet music, and we can print it out on our home printers in minutes. How convenient that is!
Before the advent of the Internet, it was hard to find free sources. Basically, to be able to borrow or make a photocopy, you had to know someone who already owned the pieces. Today, there are many ways to find sheet music, and for free.
Take advantage of search engines.
This is the easiest way to find free music. Just call up your favorite search engine, type in the title and composer of the piece you want, click “search” and see what comes up. You can also search for more arbitrary keywords such as ” free piano music sheet “, “free piano sheet music” or “free sheet music”. If you use an online resource like Google, you will usually get results with a combination of purchase and free options to choose from in your search results.
Searching for blogs
Over the years that I have personally searched for free songs, I have found that blogs are one of the best resources. There are many regular people, like you and me, who create music blogs on Blogspot or WordPress or other free blogging software and either create their own arrangements or upload tracks to their blog that are completely free to download and share with the world.
Public domain resources
If you’re looking for sheet music written a long time ago by composers who are long dead (such as Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc.), it’s likely that you’ll be able to access them completely free, since the copyright on those works has expired. Generally speaking, once something is written, drawn, painted, composed, etc., it is automatically copyrighted by the author. But anything created before 1922 is in the public domain. That’s why it’s much easier to find very old classical sheet music on the Internet than modern and popular sheet music. Popular sheet music is copyrighted, so it’s much harder to find it online without buying directly.
Check out popular sites about playing the piano.
The most popular sites for piano include pianogg.com. These are great sites for finding all kinds of free piano sheet music.
But I still can’t find them!
If you’ve tried all of the above methods and still can’t find your favorite piece, it may be almost impossible to find it for free online. I run into this regularly, usually because I’m looking for a very advanced, popular or relatively new piano piece.
Sheet Music Plus.
Sheet Music Plus offers the world’s largest selection of instrumental sheet music. If you can’t find your music for free, sometimes it’s worth paying for it. This site offers individual pieces for under $5.00. It’s certainly a small investment to get authentic piano sheet music. You can immediately download them to your computer and print them out. You can also purchase complete piano books by various musicians/composers, technical books, or books for various genres.
Virtual sheet music .
Virtual sheet music is another option if you are willing to pay for it. Essentially, you pay a flat rate of $37.75 per year, and in return you get access to an unlimited amount of free sheet music (for different instruments, not just piano). If you could download five or six pieces, it would be worth paying.
