Just like a lot of things, music stores have moved on line or closed down entirely. Gone are the days (apart from the odd exception), where music stores existed in a shop front and you could physically look at a lot of music and be able to go to the piano in the store and try the piece of music out. By contrast, these days, choosing sheet music involves browsing online.
Do not get me wrong, browsing online for music does have its advantages. From what I have seen online, a lot of places that sell sheet music, will show you a fragment or page of the music that you are interested in and it will typically have a watermark, that you can still easily read the music. The advantage of this, is that you get to try out this portion of piano music from the comfort of your own home, with no one listening to what you are attempting to play. While I acknowledge that today’s method of buying piano music is much better than it used to be, I still miss the opportunity to get lost in the world or music, in a music store, that sometimes I would happily spend hours checking music out.
Probably the biggest drawback of purchasing music online, is that you don’t get to have someone there on the spot to be able to answer your questions. Basically, you are on your own when it comes to selecting a piece of piano music. So, here are a few ideas t help you make a good decision. Firstly, have some idea of what you want to buy – don’t just have a look around, as there is too much to do that online. Next you have to know what style you are after – whether it is something classical that has a jazz interpretation, or whether it is a piece of pop music that it fully written out, or something that just has the chords.
The last thing you need to do is really look at the excerpt to see whether it would be too east or too hard. If it looks too easy or too hard, you are correct. If however, it looks like it is manageable, with a few bars (measures) that look a little challenging (but not too much), then you have found an appropriate piece of piano music for you to learn.
Hope this helps!