Can you imagine having a collection of hundreds or even thousands of songs? It will happen over time if you set an intention and use the ideas below.
Friends and Family
It might surprise you how much sheet music the people you know will give you. Just let them know you are collecting. If you impress them with your earnest desire they will go to work finding it. When they see it in their travels, they will think of you. They may even buy it for you! They may tell their friends and their friends will look for you, too. If you visit someone and notice a piano bench with music or an organ rack, they might have more in the attic. If you show interest…
Online Collections
There is plenty of sheet music on this website that you can download and print out for free. Some other online sources are:
The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins University. This wonderful resource began online way back in 1987. Their main site is pleasant and easy to use. They also have a back door entry called JScholarship which gives access to music all the way into the 1970s.
There are many other extensive online collections you can freely download from. Library of Congress, Baylor University, York University, Brown University, Mississippi State University, Gonzaga, Arizona State, New York Public Library, IMSLP (Petrucci Music Library), etc. This is how we find much of the sheet music we sing from.
Libraries
The libraries near you have sheet music you can copy or scan. You might need to ask for help from a librarian. They know their collection and will probably search for music like they search for books. You can help yourself in the music section of the stacks. If you get to a university or college library, you will find much more. Most have sheet music somewhere in the library even if they don’t put it online.
Ebay
There are scores of scores on Ebay! Don’t purchase them. Find a seller who did pretty good scans of all pages. Clip and save the images. Then you can combine them into a new pdf.
Bound collections
There are lots of folios from music companies. There is a Decade series made by Hal Leonard. Dover publications has good books. Look up Dover Publications sheet music books.
Second Hand Stores
This is a little more hit and miss. These sheets will not be free but might be dirt cheap. Look in the books. Ask at the desk. Thrift stores, Goodwill, flea markets, garage sales, antique malls. If you had a bunch of sheet music to donate, where would you take it? That’s where you might find a ton. But it won’t be there all the time.
Collecting can be fun! Be patient and take it as it comes. You might find a single song now and then or a big box full. And realize that so much sheet music gets discarded. Every piece we save is for posterity. It does require some space, though. Make a plan for how you will display or store it.
