Free sheet music

What is genuinely free

Music whose composer died long enough ago — in the UK and EU, seventy years; in the US the rules are messier but almost everything published before 1929 qualifies. That covers the entire classical repertoire up to roughly the First World War, the hymn and carol tradition, and traditional and folk music of every kind.

It also covers old editions of that music, which is why the public-domain archives hold so many nineteenth-century engravings.

And separately: music that a living composer has chosen to give away, usually under a Creative Commons licence. That is a gift with conditions attached — read them, because most require attribution and some forbid commercial use.

What only looks free

A recent song offered as a free PDF or a free tab is almost always unlicensed. If a site has the current pop charts at no cost, it does not have a licence for them; the publishers of that music sell it, and there is no charitable arrangement under which it is also free.

The consequence for you is mostly practical rather than legal: those files disappear, they are frequently wrong — transcribed by ear, in the wrong key, with invented chords — and you cannot perform from them at a public event.

The catch worth knowing about

A public-domain scan is usually a nineteenth-century edition. It is legitimate and complete, and it also reflects a style of playing that has been substantially revised since — heavy editorial phrasing, added dynamics, ornaments realised according to conventions no one now follows.

None of that matters for reading through a piece or working out whether you want it. It matters a great deal for something you are going to learn properly, which is when a modern edition earns its price.