Free Digital Sheet Music

I've finished another arrangement for easy piano and two alto saxes: Mein kleiner grüner Kaktus, from the Comedian Harmonists. I've left out the intro to make it more playable for less experienced players, but the song still 'works' quite well.

Dexter Gordon
Sonny Stitt (tenor)
Sonny Stitt (alto)
Spike Robinson
Branford Marsalis
Andy Sheppard
Hank Mobley

Mfiles has a large selection of free sheet music in Scorch and PDF format. Worth a visit. Here's a quick excerpt of the music they carry:

• Beethoven - Fur Elise (Piano)
• Pachelbel - Canon in D
• Joplin - The Entertainer
• Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata
• Bach - Toccata and Fugue in Dm
• Tchaikovsky - Sugar Plum Fairy
• Mendelssohn - Wedding March
• Mozart - Elvira Madigan
• Beethoven - Fur Elise (Flute)
• Eine Kleine Nachtmusik 1 (Flute)

"We have re-vamped our sheet music for the slow movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and are now able to include the instrumental parts for the first time. Here is the Scorch version to play online and here are PDF versions of the Conductor's Score and all the instrument parts:"

A fantastic collection of free sheetmusic for the guitar can be found at delcamp. There are also forums that give access to additional pieces.

In the category entitled “Collection of classical guitar sheet music” on the Classical guitar forum there are 1025 pages of free sheet music, available to registered users. The pieces in this collection are grouped by degree of difficulty, from Level 1 (very easy) through Level 10 (very difficult). The access is restricted to the group of members that posted at least 2 messages on the forum. There are two sheet-music catalogues : in chronological order and by level of difficulty. Pieces for several guitars are overscored in yellow.

In the category entitled “Masterpieces of the classical guitar repertoire” on the Classical guitar forum there are 321 pages of free sheet music, available to registered users. You will find here Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete work for lute alone, transcribed for guitar and also the complete work of Francisco Tarrega. These are the first masterpieces accessible to members that posted 40 messages on the forum. Catalogue in chronological order.

Mutopia is similar in spirit to Project Gutenberg, but consists of free sheet music.

Broadly speaking, copyright on a creative work expires 70 years after the creator's death. This means that the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and many other composers are in the public domain - in principle, they may be copied and performed without restriction.

However, you may not normally copy or perform a sheet music edition which you can buy, because an editor also has a copyright on the edition, and an arranger may have, too. The copyright on the edition only expires when all these people have been dead for 70 years. Additional restrictions in the USA mean that only works published there prior to 1923 are in the public domain. Only sufficiently old editions fulfil these criteria, and are therefore in the public domain.

O'Neill's Music of Ireland is a large collection of traditional Irish songs. There are 1850 tunes in the collection; they're suitable for all treble clef solo instruments like violin, flute, trumpet, mandolin and the like. Chords are posted with most of the tunes. They are "session" tunes, meant to be played for dancing and group enjoyment.

The original abc files (each containing about 50 to 100 tunes) are available at redhawk, but you're probably better off with the PDF files.

The complete O'Neill's Music of Ireland in one PDF can be found at guitarnut.com as a compressed zip file. Individual songs (also in PDF format) can be downloaded here.