Sheet music

TheOtherDennis

Is there a place for keyboards similar to tab sites like ultimate-guitar.com? By which I mean the music to songs that are predominantly played on a keyboard/piano style instrument. Eg, but not necessarily what I'm looking for, Elton John.

Whenever I do a search, I always get the subscription/paid for ones, which is fair enough, it's copyrighted material, but I can't afford a fiver upwards for each piece.

fretmeister

I've been looking for years for that for big band music.

There's very little - it seems that the IP holders are quite fierce about protecting proper sheet music. Even the stuff I've bought is marked up with my name and that it's for a single print only.

Sometimes they come up on ebay (usually an entire arrangement from Hal Leonard etc) but it's not much cheaper.

Occasionally the stuff I want matches up with the stuff  the local music trust band (that I play in) wants and then I can get them to buy it and I store the back ups. 

TheOtherDennis

Fair enough.

It's not that I'm not prepared to pay for it, I just can't afford a minimum of a fiver per piece before I can even see if I can play it or not. I used to do that with guitar books, and spent hundreds on a huge pile of stuff I've never been good enough to play, so I don't want to do that with the piano, too.

I used to be part of sheetmusicdirect.com, and that charged a variety of prices from as little as 99p, but from what I could see when I was on, that was 99% guitar based, which is why I haven't gone back for piano.

thecolourbox

I think writing out piano sheet music is a much bigger task than writing out tab so I don't think there's ever been so much of a community for it like there is with tab unfortunately.

You tend to have to trawl a lot of search results for things like "Elton John Your Song pdf sheet music free" or whatever it is you're looking for, hopefully at some point you find some random Russian who's uploaded loads of pdfs that you can download but you have to be careful as a lot of the sites like that have dodgy links on them as well

Danny1969

If it's a popular song then there's generally a midi file someone has down and loading that into any DAW will show you the notes and you can speed it up / slow it down and use it as a backing track etc. There are thousands of free midi files on the net for download. 

Often If I'm not sure of a piece I will look on Youtube for "example piano cover or lesson " .... then you will generally get a hit. With so many ways to voice the same chords though you might need to trawl through a few before you get one that's very accurate indeed. 

TheOtherDennis

Ah well, thought I'd ask. Looks like I'll have ti find a way to get books of stuff, or just stick to all the classical pieces The Pianist magazine gives away every issue.

Nothing wrong with classical music, I'd just like to do other stuff instead.

How do any of you who are keyboard players in bands go about finding what you need? Or are you good enough to work it out for yourselves?

thecolourbox

If you pm me some of the songs you are looking for I'll have a look for you mate, I've not had to look for a while but hopefully it'll help me find the sites I've used in the past so you havea few places to check in future for stuff

Funkfingers

There is a lot of money tied up in sheet music. It takes specialists to generate.  Transcribers, proof readers, printers and binders. These people all want paying.

Fees can be charged for hiring sheet music. Full score for conductors and arrangers. Instrument-specific scores for individual players. Rehearsal and performance days are all chargeable.

One of the reasons big band leaders create their own arrangements is to highlight their featured instrumentalists. Another is that they no longer need to hire the standard sheet music.

TheOtherDennis

I'm clearly not explaining myself properly.

I'm not against paying for sheet music. It's copyrighted material, the creators need and deserve to earn a living.

What I'm trying to do is avoid paying 20 quid for a book of songs that I only have the ability to play 2 or 3 of, or that only had 2 or 3 songs out of, say 15, that I even wanted to play. I have an entire library of guitar tab books like that. I've spent hundreds on music beyond my limited scope.

So I'm not trying to avoid spending money, I'm trying to avoid wasting it.

I'd just like to find some music that's both playable and affordable.

Oh, and I have nothing in particular in mind, just a site that I can look through and think "Ooh, I quite fancy having a go at that..." now and again.

Danny1969

TheOtherDennis said:

Ah well, thought I'd ask. Looks like I'll have ti find a way to get books of stuff, or just stick to all the classical pieces The Pianist magazine gives away every issue.

Nothing wrong with classical music, I'd just like to do other stuff instead.

How do any of you who are keyboard players in bands go about finding what you need? Or are you good enough to work it out for yourselves?

Although I can work out a lot of things I often have to go on Youtube and watch a more experienced player do a cover of the song or as I mentioned earlier, download a midi file. load into into any free DAW and that will show you the piano roll so you can see exactly what notes are played, like this 

thomasw88

have a look at musescore.  People transcribe scores all the time and upload them,

The other option is Scribd.  This is a paid for service (costs about £8 a month) but you get access to oodles of sheet music as well as audio books, ebooks, magazines etc.  I've been using Scribd for about 3 years now and love it.

drofluf

Have you had a look at https://www.free-scores.com ?

axisus

I find a lot of what I'm looking for just googling. Sometimes I search for pdfs, sometimes image files. I did find a couple of good sites but I'm not sure if I bookmarked them. I'll check when not at work.

TheOtherDennis

Ooh, thanks all, very helpful

Benm39

I use Musescore which is pretty reasonable