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Finding Digital Scans of Sheet Music?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the why-not-we-scan-everything-else dept.

Crymson asks: "I've been trying to find a repository of sheet music out on the web. I'm mostly interested in Classical, although scores for Brass pieces would be nice. I'm sure with Google digitizing all the books of the world, someone must be digitizing all of the sheet music. I don't want special viewers, and I don't want to pay out the nose for music that *may* be what I'm looking for. Where is a decent repository of free sheet music?"

7 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright is copyright by hedronist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Good luck. The copyright on sheet music is the same as for other works. If published before 1923, it's in the public domain, between 1922 and 1978, 95 years from publication date, after that, it's life of author + 70 years.

    In short, almost none of it can be legally scanned *and distributed*.

    For more authoritative info, google on "length of copyright" and "sheet music", or see http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use _Overview/chapter0/0-a.html

    1. Re:Copyright is copyright by kfg · · Score: 5, Informative

      If published before 1923. . .

      Like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

      In short, almost none of it can be legally scanned *and distributed*.

      And in any case, he doesn't actually want scans, even if he doesn't know that. What he wants is music that has been digitally encoded in a free and open standard, so that there are readers the can interepret and print it.

      The basically means ABC and Lilypond files:

      http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/ABC-FAQ.html

      http://lilypond.org/web/

      KFG

    2. Re:Copyright is copyright by westlake · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Although Bach's work may not be covered by copyright, the particular printing you're copying probably is. Yes, that's right, the actual way the printing company formats the score and arranges it on the page is copyrightable. So what are you going to do, track down an ancient piece of parchment and scan that? No. The only sane thing you could do is get out your favourite paint program (not score program, they probably copyright the output of it) and draw your own score, preferably from memory, then put it under a permissive license. Just be sure to note that you're not claiming copyright over the public domain work.

      You are assuming that there have been no changes in musical notation since Bach and that there are no other significant problems in preparing a score suitable for modern performance.

      If you are listening to a performance of Bach, it is almost certainly an orchestra's unique (and copyrighted?) interpretation of the work, and not an attempt at a mechanical, note-by-note, transcription of the score in manuscript.

  2. Check Here by Who235 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This looks interesting

    I think you should be able to find something here.

    BTW, GIYF.

  3. Mutopia by lobotomy · · Score: 5, Informative
    Try Mutopia. Quote:
    All music in the Mutopia Project is free to download, print out, perform and distribute. There are now 756 pieces of music available!
  4. The Sheet Music Archive by JonLatane · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Sheet Music Archive, ugly as their site may be, has a TON of good public domain, classical music available for free download. They limit your downloads per day with a cookie, but I think a clever-minded individual like yourself could get around that (and if you're not clever, in Firefox, Tools->Options...->Privacy->Show Cookies, search for sheetmusicarchive.net and delete whatever is there). I've used them for years in my piano studies.

  5. Some ideas... by CyberZCat · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.8notes.com/ looks promising they're free at least. If you want more recent songs, you'll usually have to pay to download them from commercial sites, but you can save and print them right away after paying. http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/ is a good example.

    Another thing you can do is find a midi of what you want to play (use a midi search engine: http://www.musicrobot.com/ or http://www.vanbasco.com/midisearch.html ) and open in a sequencer and print the track(s) you want. Anvil Studio is a free program which can do this. http://www.anvilstudio.com/