My Favorite Piano Literature Sources

I have such a huge library of music already, why do I keep acquiring new music? Well, because I love new music and because my students often want to play a particular piece at a particular level. So this post contains some of my favorite sources for written sheet music.

Free music is great, but there is good free and bad free music. The good kind of free music is music that is either out of copyright and in the public domain or has a type of copyright where people can print off the music for their own use. The bad kind of free music is stuff that has been posted online by random people who have transcribed the music without permission from the copyright owner. FYI - The Music Teacher National Association has a great information page here on music copyright.

IMSLP - The ultimate goal of the IMSLP is to gather all public domain music scores in addition to the music scores of all contemporary composers (or their estates) who wish to release them to the public free of charge. However, another main goal of IMSLP is to facilitate the exchange of musical ideas outside of compositions: for example, the analysis of a particular piece of music. IMSLP uses a Creative Commons License. Typically the music scores available on IMSLP are scans of old out of copyright editions of music, so you do need to be careful in case the edition is careless.

Mutopia- The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These beautifully clean copies are based on editions in the public domain, but a team of volunteers typesets the music using LilyPond software, so its easier to read than the IMSLP scans.  Mutopia also offers some number of modern editions, arrangements and new music where the respective editors, arrangers and composers have chosen to make these works freely available. Most of the music is distributed under Creative Commons licenses.

Musescore - Musescore.org is a composing software (which I use and love). It is an open source desktop software application that supports more than 50 languages and is available for PC, Macintosh and Linux. Musescore.com is a sheet music sharing social platform. Anybody can create a free account and upload their music, to share with the world or to be kept as a private backup. Musescore claims to work closely with copyright holders to make sure that the music is appropriately shared.

Folk Songs are another great source of non-copyrighted music for piano students and teachers. Songs like London Bridge, Hot Cross Buns, Greensleeves etc. can be used by students for arranging their own music or can be arranged by a teacher for use by a student. And don't forget all the Christmas carols... many of our favorite Christmas Carols are very old songs and well out of copyright.

Sometimes the music you want is definitely not out of copyright. For instance, at one point I decided that I wanted to play the theme from the HBO show, "Game of Thrones". So, I went to the ubiquitous Sheetmusicplus.com. Sheetmusicplus is a great online music store that has almost everything you can want (and you can get a discount as a piano teacher). The main downside is that the website is kind of klunky in general and their search function could definitely use some improvement. However, I have ordered quite a lot of music from them over the years. Something nice that they've done relatively recently is created SMP Press. SMP Press is a global community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters creating and selling their digital sheet music. Interestingly, SMP has secured rights to over 1.8 million copyrighted songs and anyone can legally start to create and sell arrangements of these copyrighted songs exclusively on Sheet Music Plus. Now some of the arrangements are better than others, but I found a really great arrangement on SMP Press of the main "Game of Thrones" theme. Someday it might be fun to browse the available titles and see if I can sell my own arrangements....

Musicnotes is a great website when you want to find a particular piece. They are partnered with tons of companies and arrangers, so they have a large inventory of legitimate sheet music. All the music can be downloaded directly upon purchase, so you don't have to wait. They do try to get you for an extra charge to download a pdf, but I just print straight to pdf, so that's a fee I avoid. Some of the arrangements are definitely better than others, so its worth your while to look over the arrangement choices carefully. MTNA and NAfME are coroporate partners, so they are definitely legit.

I still like books though and books are a cheaper way to go for music if you like the composer and will purchase more than one piece. For instance, I paid about $7.00 (with tax) for my digital download of Summertime by Gershwin at Musicnotes. I could have purchased Gershwin's Complete works for Solo Piano edited by Maurice Hinson for around $20.00 on Amazon. (Although, supporting your local music store is a much  better idea than ordering on Amazon.) Unfortunately for me, Summertime isn't actually one of Gershwin's piano works (it comes from the Porgy and Bess Opera), so I needed a piano arrangement. In this case, Musicnotes was handy because I was able to find a wonderful Phillip Keveren arrangement there.

Tips for students making piano performance videos using a phone

Make sure your piano performance space is quiet and without noise distractions including pets, appliances, and other people.

The camera on the back of the phone (non-selfie) has better image quality, use that camera side for your videos.

Make sure you are videoing in landscape mode. Iphones need to make sure that the portrait mode lock is not "on" in settings.

Make sure the phone is at right angles to the piano keyboard. This is the standard view for pianists and was invented by Liszt, piano's first rock star.

Make sure the phone is slightly higher than the piano keyboard so we can see both hands and the top of your head. (You can use an ironing board as an adjustable stand.) If possible, showing your feet and the pedals is also desirable.

Make sure the phone is stable and the phone microphone at the end of the phone is unobstructed. Don't cushion your iphone with extra padding that blocks the microphone end of the phone. Try to make that end of your phone as free as possible for good sound capture.

Put your phone in airplane mode before videoing and make sure it is well-charged.

Make sure your lighting makes you look visible to the camera. You may need an extra lamp or to close curtains on windows behind you. After you adjust your lighting, put your phone into a constant exposure mode before each video take.  For constant exposure and autofocus with an iphone: First point the camera at your subject and choose the area you want to focus on. Put your camera in video mode, then instead of tapping, press and hold until the camera locks on to it. You will know this has happened because a yellow box with the words “AE/AF LOCK” in yellow will appear at the top.

Don't put your phone on the piano because the audio may pick up vibrations from the piano.

Don't use the digital zoom on your phone, it lessens the quality of the video. Just move the phone closer if necessary.

Place your phone near the treble end of the piano for best sound and if you have time, take a couple of test recordings from different locations and check the quality of sound before starting your actual performance recordings. If you are using a digital piano, try recording with different volumes to see what sounds best.

Remember no performance is perfect. Do whatever number of takes you can stand to do and settle on the best. “If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.” – Beyoncé

For people who want more tech to improve their recordings:

Use a standard camera tripod for your phone with a phone mount.

Use a start and stop bluetooth camera button for your phone.

Use a plug in microphone for your phone for best audio quality.

Use video editing software for your phone either as a iphone app or computer software.