As an organist, I have been working in club land in the North of England for the past 30 years or so and one of the crucial qualifications in this environment is the ability to sight read music on demand. When I say music this can be anything from a beer matt to a ripped piece of paper repaired with selotape and stained with beer.

To be fair most of the music is written by professionals and is nice to read but not always easy. As a club organist, you do not get a band call. In fact, you are lucky to get five minutes to scan through between 10 and 15 pieces of music. Some written in different keys and some organist will tell you they hate it when they get a piece of sheet music written in six sharps, six flats, or even seven sharps, and there is a solo especially for you. Oh the joys of live music.

So how do you improve your sight-reading? Well I asked my music teacher this very question when I first started playing in clubs, because I knew I would have to play sheet music that I had never seen before. His answer was to practice sight-reading. He went on to tell me that session musicians practice by picking up any music book start playing on page one and continue until they have finished the book.

Does it work? Yes it does. Try it for yourself, pick up any piece of music you can find, preferably one that you are not that familiar with, then start to play, but do not stop. If you make a mistake it doesn’t matter, you’re not learning how to play the piece of sheet music you are learning to sight read it. You have to be strict with yourself and don’t stop playing, even when there are lots of mistakes.

When you have finished playing the piece of sheet music, you can then go back to the parts of the music that were giving you problems and learn how to play it.

Basically sight reading, is the ability to recognise musical phrases instantly. For instance if I ask you to read and play a 1 bar phrase consisting of Middle C, D, E and F, all crotchets, you should be able to play this phrase almost instantly without even thinking about it. Now, if I write the same phrase out again but two octaves higher, you might have to look at it twice. This is because the notation, two octaves above Middle C, is not as common.

Musical phrases are like words, we tend to learn what we need then stop learning new ones. So it’s probably no surprise that the intelligent people of the world know lots of words and really good keyboard players know lots of musical phrases.

If you really want to test yourself. Get yourself an audience. I practice my sight-reading every week in front of a 200 plus audience. It certainly makes you concentrate.

Before discovering piano sheet music online, my library was cluttered with old yellowed scores with rabbit ears, some torn, some stained…some just taking up valuable space on my studio shelves. If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy the fact you can find piano sheet music online knowing that you have the complete edition whenever you want it, right there at your fingertips or in your laptop to study or print. Or maybe you’re a student and want to start building your music library collection but just can’t afford the high cost of complete editions in bulky paperback format. Having your sheet music on CD means you can always go back and print as many copies as you like - originals safely stored on your CD. No more raggedy books taking up valuable shelf space in your studio. Pop the CD in your laptop and take it with you on a trip - try fitting all that music in your suitcase!

Imagine the world’s greatest piano sheet music library in the palm of your hand. Well you no longer have to imagine. You can now find complete editions of composer’s works on CD’s for under $20.00. This is good news for musicians, teachers, students and anyone looking for piano sheet music online. Each CD works on both PC and Macintosh systems using the free Adobe Acrobat PDF format to bring you hundreds and even thousands of pages of sheet music on a single CD. Just open the table of contents, click on a title and view your desired piece - or print a clear, clean, letter-size copy - as many as you wish! It is absolutely legal to print more than one copy from the CD.

Now you can buy all your piano sheet music online. This will allow you to own a library of music for your favorite composer that rivals the great collections of the world. Imagine all the great music of the world sitting on one shelf in your studio or study…. - print what you want - over and over again if you like.

You can find this piano sheet music online available in public domain editions such as Breitkopf and Haertel, Peters, G. Schirmer, Ricordi and others. Where more than one edition is available, the editors have chosen the most-often performed version or the cleanest and easiest to read.

And there is more good news: finding piano sheet music online for festival use is often challenging. But these copies are legal for use at a competition or festival. Included on every CD is a letter explaining that the music is in the public domain and that no specific permission is required. You can simply print this out and give it your competition/festival administrator just as you would do with a letter of permission for copyrighted music. Finding piano sheet music online has never been easier, or more affordable.

So, you’re looking for free piano sheet music. But not just any kind. You want New Age piano sheet music. But it’s sadly lacking in both online and offline locations. Until now. You see, I love New Age piano music. Spent most of my adult life creating and playing it.

And to tell you the truth, I’m disappointed in the complete lack of resources for this genre. The classical music world has literally millions of pieces of sheet music. And jazz? You can find thousands of lead sheets, written sheets, and complete pieces for piano available. And New Age? Forget about it.

Of course there is sheet music for New Age piano. Hal Leonard has some as do other music publishers. But it was mostly published back in the 1980’s when New Age piano hit it’s peak of popularity. Where can you find the new stuff? Unfortunately, there isn’t much being produced.

My search of the internet revealed a few artists who create New Age piano sheet music but most of them charge for it. Nothing wrong with that. They’re trying to make money doing what they love and they should get paid. But what about the beginning pianist who loves New Age piano music and just wants to play a few beginners pieces? Where should they go?

Now you can find free piano sheet music in the New Age style. I’ve created a blog where I’ll post fresh sheet music regularly. And best of all…it’s free! Why am I doing this? Because I love the genre and I want more people to get interested in it. I know many of you enjoy this style of music but are a little ashamed to say you like New Age piano. I understand. No one I know likes the term “new age” but we’re stuck with it. At least it lets us know the kind of music we’re playing.

When it comes to reading piano sheet music, the first place to start is with the individual elements of the composition itself. Before you can tackle an entire piece, you must be familiar with that particular composition’s language.

The following are steps to consider in reading piano sheet music. These will help you grasp the intent and nuances of the piece quickly.

* Look over the entire composition to get a feel for its length and structure. This first run through is just to have a quick overview of the composer’s work.

* Go through the piece a second time. This second run through is more deliberate. You want to locate any unfamiliar things: notes, chords, articulations and tempo indications. Highlight any of these that you know will require research. Use a music dictionary or other resource to understand these elements.

* Next, consider the time signature of the piece. Are you familiar with it? If not, read up on the specific time signature, as it is a primary characteristic of the song.

* Consider the key signature of the composition. Are you familiar with this key or is it new? If it’s new to you, learn the key’s scale with its attendant sharps or flats to better understand the piece.

* Look for key changes within the song. Does the song remain in the same key throughout? If not, how many times does the key change and what are those new keys? Knowing the changes ahead of time makes playing the piece easier.

* Look for tempo changes in the song and highlight them. Again, familiarizing yourself with tempo changes ahead of time allows you to glide from one section to the next easier.

* Look for common passages. Does a phrase or motif repeat itself further along in the piece? Is there a variation of a basic motif somewhere else in the composition? When you familiarize yourself with the basic one, the variations will be that much easier to understand.

* Next, break the composition up into sections. Highlight difficult passages that will require more practice time.

* Write your own notes at specific places on the sheet music. Write these notes using your own unique markings. The only rule to abide by is “whatever makes the piece easier for you to read.”

* Play through the piece once, as best you can, without stopping. Even if you have trouble at a certain point, finish the piece. This once over will give you a visual and aural snapshot of the composition.

* Play through the piece again. Stop as needed to make any additional markings in difficult areas.

* Concentrate on just the difficult passages. Look them over again a few times so their structure remains in your mind. Do this before playing them again. This sets the structure in your mind so you can concentrate on the eye-hand coordination. With your eyes familiar with the section, you can now work on your hand movements.

Playing a complete composition with piano sheet music need not be an arduous task. When you tackle its component parts one at a time, the process is much easier. When you learn the individual components and then put them all together, the result is a satisfying musical experience.

Music lovers and pianists usually search for reliable sources of piano sheet music. Amateurs typically have a constraint in terms of financial resources and prefer to look for free options. There are many websites available on the Internet that offer free piano sheet music. One of the many prominent free piano sheet music sites is www.sheetmusicplus.com. Sheet music is available on the Internet in a number of formats. The most common formats used to present sheet music are Postscript, GIF or graphics interchange format, adobe acrobat and finale. For music lovers that need a music score urgently, these websites are quite helpful. They have piano sheet listings for different music genres that make the task of finding a specific music sheet rather easy.

Free piano sheet music is rare to find, as most websites that provide piano sheet music require site visitors to acquire a membership by paying a fee. Free piano music downloads from sites such, as www.musicnotes.com are very few in number. Indeed, even such sites offer only limited pieces of music for free. The entire music scores on the site cannot be downloaded for free.

Another free piano sheet music website on the Internet is http://www.pitt.edu/~deben/freebies.html. This website has free piano sheet music made available to all age groups. It also provides music lessons with piano scores, which can be downloaded for free. This is helpful for those who are complete novices when it comes to playing music on the piano.

On the Internet, free piano sheet music can be found for many different music styles such as classics, rock and roll, country, pop, rock, oldies music from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and spirituals. It is essential for music enthusiasts looking for piano music sheets to identify their requirements in terms of the type of music and search for them extensively on various sites.

Piano sheet music is a printed musical notation for piano. Before phonograph and radio became popular, sheet music was used by musicians to make their compositions known to the people. Many of these were piano sheet music since piano was the most popular musical instrument back then.

In the late 19th century, piano sheet music became even more popular as parlor music became a massive trend in the US at the time. Parlor music was a kind of popular music that was performed in a parlor, a small room in a house where performers play a musical piece before an audience. Almost all middle-class homes during this period had parlors and a piano.

With the advent of the phonograph, radio and other modern devices that played recorded sound, the popularity of piano sheet music gradually faded.

Piano sheet music, however, is not totally out of the music scene. Song writers nowadays still publish piano sheet music on sheets of paper. With the availability of advanced computer technology, many kinds of piano sheet music are now offered in computer-readable formats. They can be easily purchased and downloaded over the Internet.

Common pieces are sold from $3 to $5, while a piano sheet music collection of most recent hits sells at around $10 to $25. Rare and old piano sheet music, usually of classical songs, are priced at about $50.

Free piano sheet music can also be downloaded from the Internet. They are mostly old musical pieces with an expired copyright, such as the compositions of famous musicians Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.

If you don’t find the sheet music of your choice online, especially if it is rare, you may look for it in music stores near you. Some websites also offer listings of music stores where you can find both the most popular and hard-to-find sheet music, old and new alike.