For our Customers

Irish Songs Announced Including New Celtic Woman

Posted on Mar 11, 2010 by Monica.

1

Thank you to everyone who requested songs from our Irish Suggest-a-Song Contest!

We were overwhelmed with your comments and reviewed hundreds of song suggestions and entries. Many of the songs you requested were already on our site in digital sheet music or guitar tab format. Be sure to check our original post Love Irish Music? Suggest a Long Lost Song To Win a $25 Gift Certificate! to see if your song was already part of our extensive Irish sheet music catalog on our site.

The first announcement we would like to make, is that we were able to fulfill several requests for one of your favorite artists from the Emerald Isle. After following up on your suggestions, we were reminded that Celtic Woman released a brand new album in January called “Songs from the Heart.” We are pleased to announce that we arranged all of the songs from this new collection, which included four songs that you had requested including: My Lagan Love, Nil Se’n La, The Lost Rose Fantasia and The Coast of Galicia. In honor of these requests, we’re offering you a chance to save money when you download sheet music from Celtic Woman’s new album “Songs from the Heart.”

From now through midnight on St. Patrick’s Day, enjoy an automatic 15% off all Celtic Woman sheet music.

We hope you enjoy the new arrangements of all twelve songs from “Songs from the Heart,” including the four that you had recommended to us.

In addition to our new selection of Celtic Woman sheet music, we are also arranging three songs that will be available to download on our site by St. Patrick’s Day. The song are Farewell to Erin (Farewell to Ireland), Planxty Burke and In the Gloaming.

For those lucky seven winners that are expecting gift certificates to Musicnotes.com, we will be emailing those to you no later than Monday, March 15th.

Thanks again for entering this contest and we hope you had a lot of fun! Be sure to stay tuned as we look ahead to new contest ideas and updated rules.

Continue Reading

Introducing Catherine Walker to our Musicnotes.com Customers

Posted on Feb 22, 2010 by catherine.

2

Hi Musicnotes.com Customers!

My name is Catherine and I am delighted to start 2010 by joining the Musicnotes.com team as their UK/European blogger! I come to the site with a background in writing and a huge passion for music of all genres and from all eras.

What I love most about Musicnotes.com is the sense of community. As one of my American colleagues said “Everything [at Musicnotes.com] … is done with the customer in mind first”. I’d like to build on this foundation and help extend this community to the UK and beyond into Europe. In order to do this I’ll need your help, so, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions please feel free to get in touch!

The whole ethos of Musicnotes.com is that the site is shaped by you, the customer. We want to hear your ideas and ensure this blog is full of material that is relevant to your musical world. We are working hard to bring you top-quality content that you will love to sing and play so if you feel there are any areas we aren’t covering please let us know!

Over the course of the next few months we will be letting you know about all our exciting new sheet music releases, special offers and competitions, as well as keeping you up-to-date with all the latest Musicnotes.com news and any other topics that spark our interest!

We will also be embracing other social networking forums in order to let you have the most current news from Musicnotes.com as quickly as possible. Keep your eyes peeled for the links to follow…

Be sure to stay tuned!

Catherine

Continue Reading

Celebrate 2010 With this Look Back at Music Trends from 2009

Posted on Dec 30, 2009 by Monica.

0

mn_winter_icon Susan Boyle. Les Paul. Michael Jackson. Twilight and New Moon. Legally Blonde: the Musical. Before you sing Auld Lang Syne and celebrate the birth of a new decade, take a look back at your favorite music news of 2009.

In 2009, you fell in love with the music from several movies and television shows. From awards ceremonies like the Oscars to the highly-anticipated films WATCHMEN and NEW MOON, television and movie sheet music news was a hot topic. So hot, that one of our most popular Songwriter Spotlight posts, was an interview with Carter Burwell.

Here are a few of the posts related to music on television shows and movies that you loved to read:

WATCHMEN Movie Sheet Music for the Soundtrack

Sheet Music from PLAYHOUSE DISNEY

Down to Earth from WALL-E

HARRY POTTER sheet music

GLEE Sheet Music

DISNEY Sheet Music for your Favorite Animated Movies

BENJAMIN BUTTON Sheet Music

sheet music from BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER episode “Once More With Feeling”

NEW MOON sheet music

2009 was also a big year for fans of video game sheet music, because we added a lot of songs that you had requested to our repertoire. Songs featured on GUITAR HERO and ROCK BAND continue to be a big hit with many of you, and we’ve heard from some of you that you’ve picked up a guitar for the first time. Of course, the big video game news this year were songs featured on BEATLES: ROCK BAND. We also added BLUE DRAGON sheet music, too!

Many of you have a renewed interest in playing your instruments or singing because of YouTube! American Idol, X-Factor and other talent shows. Susan Boyle was a pretty big phenomenon, as was Tunecore artist Gavin Mikhail. This year also had its share of bad news as well, for both guitar legend Les Paul and the king of pop, Michael Jackson, had passed away. To honor their memory, many of you expressed a renewed interest in songs that they had performed.

For those of you who love Broadway shows and musicals, this was an exciting year for you! We celebrated the 70th anniversary of THE WIZARD OF OZ, had an interview with Georgia Stitt, offered sheet music for LEGALLY BLONDE: the MUSICAL, and talked about 2009 Movie Musicals. Not included in that list is sheet music from SHREK: the MUSICAL, which debuted late this year.

We hope you enjoyed this brief look back into music trends from 2009, and wish that you enjoy your New Year’s celebrations. Ring in the New Year with music!

Continue Reading

Musicnotes.com Launches Guitar Guru 3 with $10,000 Give-a-way in Guitar Guru Sessions

Posted on Sep 02, 2009 by Bill Aicher (Director of Marketing).

0

Madison, WI – September 2, 2009 – Musicnotes, Inc., the market leader in downloadable sheet music, announced today it recently launched Guitar Guru 3, the latest major upgrade to Musicnotes’ popular Guitar Guru software platform.

To celebrate this release, Musicnotes.com is giving away $10,000 in Guitar Guru Sessions starting Thursday, September 3rd 2009 at 3:00 p.m. CDT.

Guitar Guru provides an enhanced interface to help guitarists and bass guitarists learn to play their favorite songs through downloadable Guitar Guru Sessions. Currently, the ever-growing catalog features over 1,500 songs including artists such as Metallica, Jason Mraz, Green Day, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Muse, Ozzy Osbourne and more!

Some of the new features in Guitar Guru 3 include:

Better, More Contemporary Look and Feel

Tempo Change with Correct Pitch

Precision Audio-Syncing

PC only

The $10,000 in Guitar Guru Sessions will be given out to the first 1,000 customers in $10 increments.

For more details on how you can be a part of this Guitar Guru Give-a-way, visit www.musicnotes.com/guitarguru at 3:00 p.m. CDT on Thursday, September 3rd.

About Musicnotes: Musicnotes, Inc. offers an online catalog of almost 100,000 digital sheet music titles, built on the strength of content agreements with Alfred Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Faber Music Ltd, Sony/ATV Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Disney Music Publishing, Cherry Lane Music Company, Peermusic, Word Music, EMI Christian, Bug Music and many others. Musicnotes is included in Internet Retailer Magazine’s list of the Top 500 Online Retailers and was recently selected by Internet Retailer as a “Hot 100″ site for 2009.

In 2008, Musicnotes.com purchased and re-launched MXTabs.net, turning it into the web’s first “free and legal” guitar, bass and drums tab community.

On the Web: http://www.musicnotes.com and http://www.mxtabs.net.

Continue Reading

Alfred Music Publishing and Musicnotes.com Partner to Honor Les Paul’s Memory with a Free Guitar Lesson Download of “Over the Rainbow”

Posted on Aug 27, 2009 by Bill Aicher (Director of Marketing).

0

Musicnotes.com has partnered with Alfred Music Publishing to offer music lovers everywhere a free Guitar Guru Session and guitar tab download of “Over the Rainbow” to honor Les Paul’s memory.

Now through midnight on September 2, 2009, visitors to Musicnotes.com can download a free, interactive Guitar Lesson (including matching guitar tab that’s worth $7.95) for “Over the Rainbow.” This particular arrangement was arranged by Grammy award-winning artist Aaron Stang, from Alfred Music Publishing to match the performance recorded by Les Paul and Chet Atkins and featured on the album, ‘Masters of the Guitar – Together.’

“Les Paul closed every show at the legendary jazz club Iridium in New York City with an instrumental version of this song,” said Tim Reiland, Chairman of Musicnotes.com. “This song has a very emotional meaning for musicians everywhere.”

In lieu of payment, Musicnotes and Alfred Music Publishing encourage users who choose to download the song to send donations to the Les Paul Foundation, 236 W. 30th St., Seventh Floor, New York, N.Y. 10001.

The free download is available online at http://www.musicnotes.com/free (now through midnight, September 2, 2009). Be sure to watch a video of Les Paul playing Over the Rainbow on YouTube!.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/tfa/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Continue Reading

New Musicnotes Premieres and Sheet Music from Your Song Requests

Posted on Aug 18, 2009 by Monica.

0

sheet-music-suggestion Can you believe that summer is just about over? We’ve been getting through quite a few song requests and we’re happy to offer you a lot of new songs you’ve requested. For example, you might be interested in the song Only You Can Love Me This Way by Keith Urban. In addition to a lot of great, new titles, we’re pleased to announce several Musicnotes Premieres. For the first time, you can enjoy downloading digital sheet music for these favorite artists and songs that you’ve requested.

You may recall a while back we told you that Musicnotes and Tunecore Team Up To Offer Artist Sheet Music. We just added sheet music for A Drop In The Ocean by Ron Pope today. Ron is a popular artist that many of you have requested. Watch for more sheet music from Ron and other TuneCore artists including Gavin Mikhail and William Fitzsimmons.

Also on the new song requests front, you may remember we did an interview with Kevin Kern. Kevin had asked you to recommend which songs to put up from his new selection of sheet music. We’re proud to announce we have just added three new songs: Remembering the Light, Keepers of the Flame and Sweet Dreams, Helena.

Here is a list of some other artists we’ve added sheet music or new arrangements for:

Demi Lovato – Here We Go Again
Wilco with Feist – You and I
Regina Spektor – Folding Chair We’ll have the rest of Regina’s songs from her new album Far on the site soon.
Jason Aldean – Big Green Tractor also as a guitar tab for Big Green Tractor, too. Guitar Guru Session coming soon.
Elvis Costello – Added three, new songs. Sulphur to Sugarcane, My Mood Swings and Poor Fractured Atlas.

Thank you to everyone who requested songs from Musicnotes.com. If you’re interested, feel free to ask us to add sheet music for your favorite song or artist. Even though we can’t honor every request, we do read through and try to add as many of your requests as we can.

Happy practicing!

Continue Reading

New Songs that You’ve Requested!

Posted on Jul 10, 2009 by Monica.

0

sheet-music-suggestion In our continued effort to offer you the songs you want to play, we have quite a few song titles that went live this week on our site. It really means a lot to us when we can offer sheet music for songs you like, and not just because we sell it. Many of us here are either musicians or music lovers in our own right, so we understand what it’s like to fall in love with a song.

Here are quite a few, new songs that you have requested.

Fly With Me sheet music by the Jonas Brothers.
Lovegame sheet music by Lady Gaga. COMING SOON!
The Calculation sheet music by Regina Spektor.
In the Hands of God sheet music by the Newsboys.
Gone Too Soon sheet music by Usher.
PYT sheet music by Michael Jackson.
The Climb guitar tab by Miley Cyrus. *Guitar Guru Session is coming soon.
Forgiven and Loved sheet music by Jimmy Needham.

If you are looking for a particular song title and would like to request sheet music from Musicnotes.com, please feel free to use our song suggestion tool to make your requests. Unfortunately, we can’t fulfill every song request you ask for (there’s only so many of us here…) but we make every effort to do so.

Thanks again and enjoy your new songs!

Continue Reading

Deciphering Singer Pro Sheet Music and Finding Your Vocal Range

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Monica.

4

Are you inspired to practice your singing? Want to sing one of the latest hit songs from your favorite performers? You may have noticed that we offer something called “Singer Pro” editions of our sheet music. This type of sheet music provides you with the ability to sing the vocal line for your favorite song with a piano accompaniment. Take a look:

These measures are from the spiritual Wade in the Water. You can see that the vocal line is separated from the piano accompaniment, and that the accompaniment complements the singer’s voice. Our Singer Pro sheet music is a type of scoring where the melody line is not included in the piano arrangement. If you sing in a choir or play any other instruments like flute or saxophone, you’ll be familiar with this type of sheet music because it’s intentionally composed to highlight and complement the vocal line.

Our catalog of Singer Pro sheet music also offers something to help you decide if the key the song is in will fit your vocal range. On the right-hand side of our products, you’ll see something called “Quick Details.” Pictured here are the Quick Details for the popular song Viva La Vida by Coldplay.

Scoring:

piano sheet music notation

Instruments:

Pages:

Average Rating:

How to Review Sheet Music on Musicnotes.com

At a glance, the Quick Details will help you find out if you can sing your favorite song. If you can’t, you might want to see if there is a transposition available or request one from us. First, you do need to find your vocal range in order to make a good assessment.

How to Find Your Vocal Range

To find your vocal range, you’ll need to figure out what the lowest and highest notes you can comfortably sing are. Before you test your vocal limits, we recommend warming up your voice with a few exercises. If you don’t know of any choral exercises, try singing a children’s song or a tune you’re really comfortable with. (Remember the scene from The Little Mermaid where Ariel was showing off her voice? That’s a great example of a vocal exercise!)

In this particular singing warm-up, you don’t need to worry about volume or technique. Once you’ve “warmed up,” you’ll want to start by finding middle C (which is represented as C4 on our sheet music). The number “4″ represents an octave on the keyboard, so all of the notes in the “C” octave, starting with middle C will have a “4″ after it. The next octave will start with C5; the previous with C3 and so on. Your vocal range will be determined by the lowest note you can sing comfortably to the highest note. A song’s vocal range is listed the same way; from the highest note to the lowest note in the sheet music.

Let’s match up a few vocal ranges to some of our songs to show you how important your range is. Say that you find out your vocal range is from G3 to E5. Looking at the Quick Details above, you see that the range for Viva La Vida is from Eb4 to Ab5. That means the vocal line reaches a higher register because the lowest note is an E flat above middle C and stretches to an A flat above high C. In this case, your range wouldn’t match up with the song because you can’t comfortably sing a high A flat. For this song, you’ll probably need a transposition of the piece that would fit within your vocal range. For Wade in the Water on the other hand, the range listed is between A3 to D5. Your singing voice would be able to comfortably handle that song.

We hope our look into sheet music for singers has helped you today. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to post them here in the comments!

Continue Reading

Love Piano Sheet Music? Learn about Types of Notation!

Posted on Apr 13, 2009 by Monica.

8

piano-keyboard Notation is the way music is represented by written symbols. Symbols can include notes or other markings that indicate how to play your song. A few of you had asked what some of those musical symbols mean, and our production team recommended this list of modern musical symbols which includes everything from a “staff” to the “fermata” symbol, which looks like a bird’s eye.

Did you know that sheet music is a form of music notation? There are several different ways that a song can be written into sheet music. Often, the notation may change depending upon the arrangement, complexity and musicians involved in the piece. For example, our Singer Pro sheet music features an independent vocal line that is separated from the piano accompaniment. Whenever possible, our Singer Pro piano accompaniments are notated just as you hear on your favorite artists’ recordings. As another example, there are multiple ways that music notation for guitarists can be rendered, too.

Piano Music Notations

Here are some other piano sheet music notations that you might be interested in learning more about.

Notation Style	Example
Piano/Voice/Guitar (PVG) Typically, this notation offers the piano part, vocal line and guitar chord frames. You might also see the vocal part repeated in the piano part. Piano/Vocal/Chords (PVC) Typically the music notation offers the piano part, vocal line, and chord names above the staff. You might also see the vocal part repeated in the piano part.
Piano Solo This type of music notation doesn’t offer a vocal line, because it’s meant to be performed as a piano solo. These notations may or may not offer chord names as well.
Easy Piano This type of music notation is geared toward beginning to elementary level piano students. Sheet music may often includes lyrics, but isn’t listed as a separate vocal line. Did you know that easy piano arrangements can almost always be performed as a piano solo? However, easy piano arrangements are “abridged” and do not always contain complete lyrics. Like the piano solo notation, you may or may not find chord names above the staff.
Five Finger Piano If you’re learning how to play piano, you know how important fingering is! In this style of piano music notation, notes are numbered by finger and hands stay in one place over the same keys throughout. Typically, five finger piano notation offers the melody line of your favorite songs, but it also might include an optional teacher accompaniment.
Big-Note Big-Note notation refers to sheet music that features larger notes. These songs may include notation for easy level piano, but not necessarily. Big-Note notation is more about the “size” of the notes than the level of complexity. We recommend reviewing any songs you wish to download with big-note notation before you purchase them to ensure that the song fits your level of playing ability.
Letter or E-Z Play Today If you’re looking for the easiest type of music notation that we sell, then you’ll want to look for Letter or E-Z Play Today notation. Typically, these arrangements only focus on the right hand melody of your favorite songs and include large notes with the letters printed right in the notes.

Continue Reading

Chopin, Ask Musicnotes and U2 in The Whole Note

Posted on Apr 09, 2009 by Monica.

0

According to the Wikipedia entry on Chopin, “Chopin’s music for the piano combined a unique rhythmic sense (particularly his use of rubato), frequent use of chromaticism, and counterpoint. This mixture produces a particularly fragile sound in the melody and the harmony, which are nonetheless underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic techniques.

He took the new salon genre of the nocturne, invented by Irish composer John Field, to a deeper level of sophistication. Three of Chopin’s twenty-one Nocturnes were only published after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes. He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurek and the Viennese waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write ballads and scherzi as individual pieces. He also took the example of Bach’s preludes and fugues, transforming the genre in his own Préludes.”

Musicnotes.com is proud to feature this classical composer known for his emotionally-charged works on our classical sheet music page. We’ve added dozens of Chopin sheet music that you can download for your next concert or practice for our Musicnotes.com YouPerform Contest.

Choose from over one-hundred and ninety different arrangements of Chopin sheet music for your needs. Remember, many of these songs are Musicnotes Editions, too!

Did you Ask Musicnotes about Transpositions? Here’s our Answer!

Many of your questions that we received were related to transpositions for sheet music. Specifically, how can you get your sheet music transposed to the key that is more comfortable for you, your choir or your band to play.

When songs are written into sheet music, they’re frequently set in keys that are comfortable for most players and singers. If an “originally-recorded in” key is noted on the sheet, Musicnotes.com tries to offer you a corresponding transposition.

You can transpose many of our sheet music downloads at the time of your purchase, but at this time we don’t offer any tools that allow you to transpose the songs yourself. If you have a song that you want in a different key, we’ll be happy to transpose it for you! Just contact our Musicnotes Customer Service department and request your transposition. Make sure that you give us a little bit of advance notice when you’re requesting transpositions so we can ensure we’re hitting the “right notes.”

Watch for an upcoming post next week where we share more answers for Ask Musicnotes!

Sheet Music for U2 Album “No Line on the Horizon”

U2 made waves earlier last month with the release of their new album, No Line on the Horizon. The CD is a departure from what we’ve come to identify as “classic” U2, and embraces old sounds in new and innovative ways. From the upbeat Get Your Boots On to the lovely melody White As Snow, U2’s new musical venture highlights a potpourri of musical styles that range from 70s throwbacks to world music.

Now you can be a part of this musical journey by playing guitar tab or sheet music for No Line On the Horizon by U2. If you’re interested in learning more about U2’s new album, read Rolling Stone’s Review of No Line on the Horizon.

That’s all for this week’s edition of The Whole Note. Remember, stay sharp and keep practicing!

Continue Reading

Had a Song Suggestion? Here’s a Few of Your Requests!

Posted on Mar 12, 2009 by Monica.

0

Seems like only yesterday when we posted about our continued efforts to help you find your song. We’re not ready to make our big announcement yet, but we can tell you that we’ve made significant changes on the back end to get ready a change. Before we revisit the song suggestion tool for those of you who are new to Musicnotes, here’s the Top Five most requested songs that are now available on Musicnotes.com. These are songs that YOU asked for, and are now available through our site for the US and Canada.

One Pair of Hands by Carroll Roberson

Never Say Never by The Fray

Where the Story Ends by The Fray

Check Yes Juliet by We The Kings

Womanizer by Britney Spears

Earlier this year we talked about how we were making improvements to our Musicnotes song suggestion tool. In the post where we had explained How to Suggest your Song to Musicnotes.com, we had mentioned a few other songs that you had requested:

If you can’t find sheet music for the song that you’re looking for, we encourage you to use our song suggestion tool. We take your requests seriously, and have added several songs over the past, few months to our website including: sheet music for the Twilight soundtrack, Mistletoe by Colbie Caillat and Fidelity by Regina Spektor.

Thanks to all of you who suggested songs. As we mentioned earlier this week on Twitter, sometimes some music never even gets to print (or digital format) for many reasons. Some songwriters never even consider releasing the song as sheet music because the film they wrote for didn’t do as well as they expected. In some cases, some artists release sheet music in specific areas of the world, like Australia, but don’t make the songs available elsewhere.

Even though realizing that there are issues with an artist or a song is definitely not the fun part of reading your song requests, we are really happy when we can fulfill your requests. Thanks to you, we just celebrated your five millionth digital download since Musicnotes first started. We hope you’ll join us as we raise a glass to you today. Cheers to fulfilling your favorite song requests and celebrating the next five million!!!

Now, what are you reading our blog for… Grab your sheet music and play or sing your favorite song today!