Finding Free Sheet Music Online

If there’s one thing all musicians need, it’s music. If you are an enthusiastic musician, you can’t get enough music. Sheet music can be expensive to acquire. Not that composers don’t deserve to be compensated — but having access to even a little free sheet music online can help.

Here are some well-known, and some not so well-known online sources for sheet music you can print out and use.

MusOpen

Musopen describes itself as a nonprofit that provides access to free (non-copyright) music and music related resources. Most of the music listed was written by classical composers and no longer covered by copyright.

The MusOpen organization posts recordings, sheet music, and textbooks free. Under the sheet music tab, you can browse and select compositions by composer, instrument, musical period, or musical form.

IMSLP

The International Music Score Library Project, also known as the Petrucci Music Library, is a virtual online library of public domain music scores. It launched in 2006 and currently contains more than 267,000 music scores.

The fact that IMSLP is considered the largest free online sheet music source in the world also makes it somewhat difficult to navigate. You can search for a specific composition or composer or browse, along the left hand side by composer, nationality, time period, or instrumentation.

There is even a “search by melody” feature by which you play a part of a melodic line on a screen-based keyboard and the search engine will find compositions that contain that melody.

Sheet Music Archive

The Sheet Music Archive contains a huge collection of public domain or out-of-copyright piano sheet music. You can search by composer, instrument, genre, and title.

One note of caution: Sheet Music Archive does contain hundreds of pieces that are free to download. Like many such sites it also has a subscription option ($5.99/month) that lets you download more than 100,000 pages of music at no additional cost.

Choral Wiki

The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) currently contains free scores for almost 18,000 choral and vocal works representing more than 2,300 composers.

CPDL is free (it does accept donations) and like many totally free sites, is a little more trouble to navigate than many subscription-based sites. Still the search function — either by keyword or a more-restrictive exact match functions well.

In addition, if you click on “Music Scores” on the left side of the main page you will be led to a number of options for browsing within various categories.

Free-Scores.com

Free-scores.com offers, not only the sheet music, but also often a sound file and even — on occasion — a YouTube video of a performance of the music. That makes this site a great option for someone learning a new piece of music who would also like to hear it performed.

This site also includes contributed music by contemporary composers — some of whom place restrictions on the use of their music. In general, all music is free to download and use — you just can’t sell it to somebody else.

Exercise Caution

There are literally hundreds of sites on the Internet that advertise “free” music. Many of them are subscriber-based (for a fee). Once you subscribe you can freely download music, but depending on the cost of a subscription, these sites can be expensive.

Others violate copyright laws by offering music that is not in the public domain. No matter how temping, you should always avoid downloading anything illegally.
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