Piano Sheet Music in the Internet Age
Over the past decade, the rise of the Internet has dramatically changed the availability and presentation of piano music. Free downloads of sheet music — as well as audio recordings of piano performances — are easy to find in abundance through a simple Web search. Because of this, old-fashioned sheet music publication has been on the decline in favor of Web-based documents — image files, .pdf’s, eBooks, and other formats. As with a lot of technological change, this is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just different. Today, conscientious adult piano players should have a basic understanding of the current state of sheet music publication, and where it is headed. After all, when we examine our habits as consumers, we find that most of us tend to look for the cheapest and easiest options whenever possible. So these days, when there are so many free p black leather guitar strap iano music downloads to be found all over the Internet, why would anyone ever pay money for sheet music? In truth, more people cling to the old mediums of sheet music than one may think. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with this. Some people are simply not comfortable with the Internet, and may never be. Besides, what adult piano player doesn’t enjoy the look and feel of a thick, comprehensive collection of the piano works of Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, or Rachmaninoff? Most contemporary pianists learned how to play with such books, and most still own tons of those old, worn, and wrinkled collections. Until recently, these books were the lifeblood of the piano world, which had been the case ever since the advent of the printing press. Indeed, something has certainly been lost in the decline in popularity of such books.