Where To Download Free and Legal Classical & Contemporary Piano Sheet Music

If you’re learning to read music or wanting to find a new piano piece to play, this post is for you. Today I’ll show you where you can download free and legal piano sheet music. Either for free or for a very low fee.

There are hundreds of websites out there offering free sheet music but not all of them are created equal. Some are thinly disguised search engines that just want to sell you music related stuff while others are just ad portals. I have scoured them all, looking at the range of music, quality and speed of the download and for anything nefarious included in those downloads.

The websites listed below are simple to use, free or low cost and will only download the sheet music and nothing else.

The International Music Score Library Project

One of the most popular places to download free and legal piano sheet music is The International Music Score Library Project. It is a project that collects sheet music and compositions that are public domain or creative commons. There are thousands of pieces there, from audio recordings to scores from all eras and composers. It is well worth supporting if you like music.

Sheeto.com

Sheeto.com is a great place to find hard to locate sheet music. It seems to have a wide range of pieces that other sheet music websites don’t. If you’re looking for something obscure, old or niche, this is the place to come. It is a trading site, so to download piano sheet music, you need to share sheet music. The more you offer, the more seriously you will be taken by users and the more willing they are to share with you. It is an excellent resource for anyone serious about music.

The Pianist’s Library

The Pianist’s Library contains a wide range of sheet music from quite the selection of composers. It is a direct download site, so find what you want and download it free and legal. Simple. It doesn’t have the breadth of the Library Project or the hard to find pieces of Sheeto but it does have a very respectable range of sheet music.

8notes

8notes is a good looking website that allows you to download free piano sheet music. It also has guitar, violin, alto sax, vocal, clarinet and trumpet music and many more instruments too. It is a very deep site with a search function and categories to help make finding what you’re looking for slightly easier. Many of the pieces featured on 8notes have an audio clip that accompanies the sheet music so you can listen before you download. It’s a neat feature that allows you to double check you have the right music.

Virtual Sheet Music

Virtual Sheet Music requires paid membership to access everything but does feature free sheet music too. It features piano, guitar, vocal, violin, flute and more with a broad collection of sheet music covering most composers and music types. Navigate to the Free Stuff using the navigation to check out the freebies. You will still have to log in to download the free sheet music but won’t have to pay anything for it.

Musicnotes

Musicnotes is not free but the sheet music is very reasonably priced. For around $5, you get a digital print of classical and contemporary piano sheet music which you can download. The quality is excellent, downloads fast and each piece is available in a range of keys which is ideal if you’re learning or developing your skills.

FreeScores

FreeScores is not totally free, but is mostly free. There is a mix of public domain and premium sheet music on this site that covers a wide range of genre, instruments, eras and composers. This site is especially useful for learning duets or quartets as it lists sheet music by instrument or combination of instruments. It is a simple but very effective feature than makes FreeScores well worth trying.

Pianolicious

Pianolicious features mainly contemporary music, pop and rock. If you’re looking for something more up to date, this site could have it. It hasn’t been updated for a couple of years but there are some mainstream tunes in there from Rihanna, Adele, Justin Bieber and others. If your tastes are more modern than classical, this site might be for you.

Pianotte

Pianotte specializes in free and legal piano sheet music so is ideal for our needs. The site itself isn’t much to look at but if you like modern as well as classical, this could be perfect. The site features everything from Prince to Lenny Kravitz, Axel F to Adele and pretty much everything in-between. It is a huge repository that seems to be regularly updated with new pieces.

Musescore

Musescore is very cool if you’re a musician. Not only is it a large repository of sheet music, it also features software that helps you create your own. If you’re just starting out and don’t want to invest in premium software to create your own sheet music, this is a great resource to get to grips with the basics before making that investment. Plus, the sheet music featured on the site is wide and varied too.

Mutopia Project

The Mutopia Project is another open source music repository but this time, it features modern, popular, gospel, folk, jazz, baroque and all eras and genres of music. It is a large repository that covers piano and a range of instruments across all kinds of tastes. It’s all free and you can contribute too if you have something that isn’t already there. These kinds of sites are well worth supporting as they help propagate music and make it free for all regardless of means.

Musicianeo

Musicianeo lets you download free and legal piano sheet music from a range of composers and musical types. It includes modern, classical, baroque and all manner of styles. There are apparently over 244,000 individual pieces on the site and even a quick browse around it shows this to be very likely true. There are also other resources and an active community too.

Sheet Download

Sheet Download does exactly what it says it does. It is a resource for downloading piano sheet music for free. It isn’t as large or as deep as some of the sites featured in this guide but it does have some decent music. It’s a mix of eras including fairly modern and there is a lot of sheets on here that I haven’t seen elsewhere. If you’re looking for something specific, this is definitely a site to try.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website has a range of piano sheet music to download. The sheet music part of the site isn’t massive but it does have a nice selection of pieces from a range of composers. Some popular, some niche so it well worth checking out if you cannot find something on one of the other sites in this guide.

Duke University Libraries

Duke University Libraries has over 3,000 piece of sheet music that are free to download. They specialize in American music published between 1850 and 1920 so will cover many pieces not covered by the more popular classical or modern sites. If you like the music of this period, this is definitely a website to try. From Irving Berlin to Fred Buckley, there is a little bit of everything from homegrown composers.

Making Music Fun

Making Music Fun is for younger musicians. It is a community that supports a wide range of musical activities from finding a piano teacher to developing skills. There is also a repository of free sheet music on the site that covers piano and other instruments. Each piece is graded according to difficulty and listed accordingly. This is an excellent idea for those learning music as it stops you becoming depressed when you cannot play something that is way too complicated for your level. An excellent resource!

Musicnotes.com

Musicnotes.com has a selection of free sheet music to download. It is a subscription site that offers a selection of free downloads alongside its premium music. The range is wide and includes piano, strings, vocal, wind, brass and more within the site. The selection of free music isn’t huge but it is respectable so is worth a visit.

Classic Ragtime Piano

Classic Ragtime Piano is another self-descriptive website that gives more than a clue as to what you’ll find here. If ragtime is your thing, this is the place to come. The selection isn’t huge but it does contain a range of the more popular ragtime tunes from a golden era of our musical history.

Rag’s Rag

Finally, Rag’s Rag builds on what Classic Ragtime Piano does by featuring over 200 ragtime sheet music downloads. It also includes an audio clip of the piece so you know what you’re downloading. The site is simple and the collection narrow, but if ragtime is what you love this is another site you won’t want to miss.

Got any other websites that let you download free and legal piano sheet music? Tell us about them below if you do!