Find Free Sheet Music from the Internet

Want to play for free? Here's a guide to finding any sheet music for free from Internet.

Steps

  1. Search on free sheet music databases like IMSLP, mutopia or CPDL! These contain mostly classical music.
  2. Use search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. These are the most important tools that can help you to find free sheet music. You have to be very specific with your search term. Sheet music is often either in a jpeg or pdf format so it may be useful to include those extensions (.jpg or .pdf) as part of the search query.
  3. Use more than one language when searching. This very simple method is often overlooked. Since the sheet music in itself is an international language, scores published on a website in Italian are as useful for you as scores on for example a website in English. Searching only in English limits your chances to find the musical score you are looking for. Instead of "free sheet music of Mozart" also try for example the following search phrases: "partitions gratuites de Mozart" (French)/ "partituras gratis de Mozart" (Spanish and Portuguese)/ "spartiti gratis di Mozart" (Italian)/"kostenlose Noten von Mozart" (German) etc. You can find more translations of the word "sheet music" at www.world.altavista.com.
  4. Guess the filename when searching. Often, when the sheet music you are interested in is not purposely linked to with a description, etc.(i.e. the file is just sitting in some directory) and is of a less or non-searchable format(image files) the only words you can use are what the file is actually named. Try combinations of the artist and song title separated by underscores or not separated at all.
  5. Find website partners. When you land at a sheet music websites, look for links that says “link page”, “link partners”, “Resource”, “Other websites”, “Other links”. You should be able to find a list of website address which point to other sheet music websites.
  6. Use notation software to transcribe the Midi files into sheet music. Recommended software: Midinotate Composer & Noteworthy Composers. These two softwares have 30 days free trial. For Linux systems, Rosegarden is a completely free option.
  7. Use guitar tabs and try to play the chords while playing back the song on the radio. This should give you good feel on how to play the song.



Tips

  • When searching for a .pdf file, a simple shortcut to finding sheet music is this: search (music name) œœœœ filetype:pdf. The œ's, in a .pdf file, represent music notes in most notation fonts, and can be typed by pressing ALT and 0156 (or you can just copy it from here).

Things You'll Need

  • Internet connection
  • A Computer with keyboard and mouse

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