Free Sheet Music Download Site And Links

[Dirge]

I've just found 'Musica Viva' at http://www.musicaviva.com/index.html It has a lot of freely downloadable sheet music. When you start working through it (and I found it a bit cumbersome to sort) lots of the music seems to have been arranged by the man who did the site, they tend to be trad tunes arranged for various instruments, and you see the same ones time after time. You get the feeling he wanted to bulk the site up quickly. There's no 'concertina' section but by choosing the right instrument you could find easy arrangements of stuff which I thought might do well for an 'improver' who could read music. There's some more sophisticated stuff too but you have to work through to find it. So, with potential but a bit cluttered, probably largely aimed at learners.

 

Anyway I thought that showed promise, but then I looked at their download index, which is a collection of links to other places where you can get free music downloads. This seems excellent. One I particularly liked is the Charles H Templeton collection (you'll have to find it for yourselves; it's at the top of the list). It calls itself ragtime but that's underselling it, as they seem to use that as the hold-all title to cover all popular music types. It looks to be an excellent varied collection of early 20c popular sheet music; you can just print it off as original, complete with cover and adverts on the back.

 

(Did you know Irving Berlin wrote a tune called 'Hello Central, Get Me No-Man's Land', and it's just as syrupy as you'd expect? There to print off, should you want to know more)

 

There's someone who's put all the Scarlatti sonatas on line, an on-line jazz fake book (-with a failed link; frustrating) several folk sites, lots of stuff to explore of all flavours. Go and have a look and find something to widen your repertoire!

 

I'll just edit in that my technique with this sort of site is to do a double selection. I save the music pdf files to a folder labeled sheet music on the slightest whim. So I'll look at something and think 'Grief, 6 flats' and move on, but I might save the next one because the intro looks jaunty without even inspecting the main theme. Then later I'll take the concertina to the computer and have a jolly session deciding that I can't play any of them but might eventually manage THAT ONE or possible THIS ONE, and they are the ones I actually waste paper and ink on. Have fun.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Dirge

[Leo]

Dirge

 

Thanks. It does look only a little cumbersome. It'll take a some looking to find an exact tune looked for, but chances are it can be found somewhere in there. It could turn out to be a valuable resource.

 

Thanks

Leo

[wntrmute]

I found a site HERE with some free GIFs of songs, usually with MIDI examples.

[Marien]

I entered a couple of "traditional folk music" links to many countries.

Maybe it has some good stuff, but I found that many of the links are outdated.

It looked promising, but when I tried to open any of the 4 pages for danish folk music, I did not find one.

When I checked Norway, I found two invalid links and one french page about music, but no tunes.

If you select Balkan, it will offer you links to several abc pages.

 

So it is quite a searching festival to go through this.

 

Keep on googling

 

Marien

[Musical Sore]

A useful site for (particularly American) popular songs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is

www.parlorsongs.com

[gabriele]

A useful site for (particularly American) popular songs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is

www.parlorsongs.com

Have you heard of "The Session" http://www.thesession.org/ You find sheet music for lots of Irish tunes there for free. To get a decent print-out I save the music in my directory and then print out from there.