Whenever I am searching for anything to do with music (which happens quite a bit) I’ll often come across the opportunity to download and print off free piano music, even when I’m not even searching for it.
Sure free sounds good, but sometimes it is hard to know if the website is a reputable one or not. As the older generations know well, sometimes free is not free at all. Not that I have ever bought piano music online before, I’ve always done it the old fashioned way of buying my music from a music store. I must admit I enjoy the process of seeing what the latest releases are and just having a good browse!
I get that there will be the odd occasion where I will order some music online, but for now I have a wonderful music store just 10 minutes away. I understand that for some people will need to shop online because the nearest music store is too far away for their liking or there is illness, disability or caring for someone else that makes a visit to the local music store virtually impossible.
I am very wary of being able to get free piano music online, especially websites that don’t have a virtual music store connected to their site. If the music websites have some virtual store as part of their website, then print music that is free from these sites is usually a promotion to entice visitors to get the freebie and buy something as well.
My wariness about free music is that you can’t always be sure that you are not breaking any copyright laws and before you claim that no one ever gets caught, I know people do get caught and I would rather not take the risk. I would strongly encourage you to not take the risk of violating copyright laws.
There is so much piano print music available that it could prove to be overwhelming to make a selection. I would suggest that you have at least an idea of what you are looking for before you begin your search.
When searching for specific pieces of music on Google, I would recommend that you put in selection criteria that would help you get exactly what you want. For instance, you could use the terms beginner, intermediate, advanced or very advanced. You could request to have a piece of music in a particular key. It might not be possible to get everything in so many different versions but if it is something really famous like Beethoven’s Fur Elise, then you would have such a huge selection to choose from. Literally there must be dozens of copies available (at the time of writing this) and these are just from including the search term of free. For some of you, you might also want to include the search term of ‘large print’ if you don’t care to look at the smaller print.
In short, be specific about what music you are after and if you choose to get it online then be selective about which sites you are willing to download free music from.