Sheet Music & Song Books

Sheet Music Song Books

Whether you are in a local band, play an instrument as a hobby, or are a professional musician, you may want to find a particular piece of music to learn. Songbooks are available in a variety of instruments as well as at different performance levels. Sheet music can be found in many genres and eras, from blues and classical to modern and rock.

There are 22 genres available, and there are subgenres within each. They range from melodious children's tunes to soulful blues. Perhaps country's two-step is your style or Bach's "French Suite Bourree," a fast four-step beat from the Baroque Era. The cool improvisational piano of Thelonious Monk could be what you seek, or you could prefer spiritual religious organ music.

Music for the piano and guitar, including acoustic, steel, bass, electric, and classical, offers the widest selection. You have a choice of genres, but you also have format options.

• Sheet Music: Typically one song, most often for just the piano, these compositions include the lyrics, chords, and melodies.
• Collection or Song Book: This is a compilation of songs, which could be a specific genre or theme, such as Christmas Carols, a single artist's greatest hits, or a soundtrack from a movie or play.
• Piano Score: Score contains each instrument's part and is bound like a book.

Piano music with letters is a way of learning an instrument. The notes are assigned a letter that corresponds to the keyboard. Each letter is colour-coded to indicate its pitch. There is also an image of the keyboard that displays each coloured letter as it relates to the specific key.

Tablature, or tab, is a music writing style used most commonly with guitars.

• Notations written on six lines, each correlating to a guitar fretboard's 6 strings.
• Teaches you where to place your fingers on the fret rather than focusing on the pitch.
• Creates the melody.

Chorded music is the most commonly recognized system of composition.

• Notations written on five lines.
• Focuses on structure and tonality.
• Provides the harmony.

There are a variety of available editions to practice the scales and arpeggios for each instrument. Many budding musicians consider them boring warm-up exercises and rush through them. The scales are the building blocks of learning to read musically. Arpeggios are the individual notes that make up each. It's particularly effective to practice the scales in the key of the piece(s) you want to perform. Scales and arpeggios loosen you up and improve technique.