| Frequently
Asked Questions
The most common questions from our visitors:
Can you please help me find the song....
What exactly is the Free Sheet Music Guide?
How do I use this web site?
Where is the free sheet music?
Why do you sell sheet music when this is the
free sheet music guide?
How do you get around copyrights? Are the composers
getting royalties for their work?
How do I read/use Guitar Tablature? Can I Use
it for the Piano?
QUESTION: Can you please help me find the song....
ANSWER: We get about a dozen
requests a day from visitors asking us to help them find a particular song by a particular artist. Like you, we
are very busy people, and so we have created a handy-dandy article called 'How to Find Sheet Music on the Internet'
to help guide you through the EXACT process we use to find sheet music ourselves. Rather than contacting us, please
go through the step-by-step article. Thanks very much!
QUESTION: What exactly is the Free Sheet Music
Guide?
ANSWER:
We like to think of ourselves as a topic specific Internet directory. The topic? Where to find sheet
music.
If you need to find it, and you don't know where to start looking, start with us. All of our listings, which are
updated regularly, are organized by genre (see the categories on our home page or at the top of this
page) for easy browsing. Plus we have one unique feature that goes far beyond most Internet directories - we give
you details about the site listed. Not just the link and a short description, but a full review with the type and
amount of free sheet music available.
QUESTION: How do I use this web site?
ANSWER:
As stated above, all of our sheet music site listings are organized by genre. Each genre
category page contains
our recommendations on where to find the highest quality sheet music on the Internet. Web site recommendations are generally listed alphabetically, with
our favorites displayed first (Editor's Picks), the rest after that. Each listing tells you up front the following:
Instrumentation:
What instrument(s) are represented at the site
Categories:
What category we classify the web site in.
Catalog Size:
How much free sheet music you will find there.
QUESTION: Where is the free sheet music? There
is NO free sheet music on this site!
ANSWER:
The Free Sheet Music Guide is designed to be a directory. We scour the Internet looking for the highest quality free sheet music web sites
and then review and categorize them here. It makes your search much easier, because rather than searching blindly
for the sheet music you want via the search engines, you can browse our directory, find the right place for
you, and go directly there to find what you want. We
even list our editor picks first so that you
can be sure not to visit the highest quality
sites first. See above question on how best to use this web site.
QUESTION: If this is the free sheet music
guide, why do you charge for sheet music?
ANSWER: In
addition to our free sheet music directory,
we offer sheet music for sale. We do
this for a couple of reasons:
a) There are many people who are simply searching for sheet music and would rather pay for it than spend hours
surfing the net to find it free. We know this to be true as we generate an average of 40-50 orders per day. These
are happy customers who will get the exact sheet music they want in their hands within 2-3 business days (in most
cases).
b) We know that people want free sheet music (thus the web site), but we try to encourage everyone to purchase
sheet music to support the artists they love. Why? Downloading sheet music that is NOT in public domain is breaking
the law. We want to encourage you to do the right thing. We realize that many people download sheet music just
to try it out. Still, like you would with any shareware software program, if you find you make use of it, it is
only right to pay the artist what is due them.
c) Making sheet music available for purchase to those who want it is how we support this site. We spend hours a
week scouring the Internet for free sheet music so you don't have to. Instead, you can come here and find the BEST
sites all in one place. We provide a valuable service to you, at our expense. The sponsorship helps us to continue
to do that to the best of our ability.
QUESTION: How do you get around copyrights?
Are the composers getting royalties for their work?
ANSWER:
All the sheet music offered for download from the Free Sheet Music Guide is considered
'public domain,' meaning the copyright has expired.
We do our best to encourage people looking to download sheet music not in public domain to purchase it instead,
thus supporting the artists. See the question above.
Guitar Tabs are a bit different, and are widespread on the net - much more so than anything else. These are generally
interpretations of works, rather than the works themselves and thus the copyright line is a bit more vague. It's
generally conceded that if tabs are used for study and educational purposes and not for resale, it's not a problem.
It's a pretty thin line, though. That's exactly why we stick with offering only public domain works for download
from The Free Sheet Music Guide.
It's much less controversial.
QUESTION: How do I use Guitar Tablature?
/ Can I Use it for the Piano?
ANSWER: There are generally two different
kinds of tab. The most common contains the lyric with the guitar chord placed above the appropriate spot in the
song to play it.
For example:
| Eb |
Bb/D |
Cm |
Ab |
| I could sing unending songs of how you saved my soul |
| Eb |
Bb/D |
Cm |
Ab |
| I could dance a thousand miles because of your great love |
This is the kind of tab that a skilled pianist can generally use to improvise from. It does require however that
you are already familiar with the melody and rhythm of the piece.
Using tabs to play piano is not optimal, but some pianists skilled in improvisation can do it. It's just one of
the things you get more accustomed to doing with experience. Generally, tabs are designed as an accompaniment to
voice, and not intended as a guide to the melody. Tabs just provide the foundational chording to accompany the
part that is sung.
So, how can you practice playing piano from tabs? One suggestion would be to find the tab for a favorite song that
you like or have a recording of - then play back the song and follow along at the piano just playing the chords
provided in the tab. This may give you a feel for the possibilities. Provided the tablature as written is in the
same key as the recording, it should work out pretty well. However, tablature is not an exact science since what
is written is just one guitarists interpretation of the piece. So keep that in mind.
The other kind of tab is strictly for guitarists. It's a bit more complex and while it's great for guitarists,
it's useless to try and convert it to piano. Here are links to some great articles showing how to read this kind
of tab:
How
to Use Tablature and Other Things
How to Read Guitar Tablature
The
Guide to Tab Notation
How
to Read and Write Guitar Tablature
Have a question not answered here? If you are searching for sheet
music for a particular song, please see our article How
to Find Sheet Music on the Internet. For any other question,
feel free to Email us. |