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!

Let’s listen to Daniel as he talks about his love for the organ and a bit about his musical background.

I arranged the music for the organ and performed it on my Allen Home Organ. I love Theatre Organ and wanted to give the medley a Theatre ending so the last part is my own special arrangement. The organ is more versatile than a piano and the the different sounds and pedals that I chose made the medley sound like it was played with a full orchestra. Organs are not just for “Churches” and for playing classical pieces. Thank you for offering organ music on your website -- it would be awesome to a have a greater, more contemporary, selection in the future. I love playing all types of music on the organ -- Beatles songs are my favorite!

I have been taking organ lessons for 5 years and piano lessons for 3 years. I play both instruments every day for at least 1/2 hour. Most days I do not formally “practice” but just play for the enjoyment of it. I also play trumpet in the school Concert Band and play the keyboard in the school Jazz Band. I used the whole month of December to master the song -- spending about 10 minutes each day on it.
--Daniel, December Musicnotes.com YouPerform Contest Winner

Daniel offered this tip to you, our fellow music lovers, if you’re going to try to learn this challenging piece: “I found it helpful to learn the song slowly, section by section, just a few lines at a time. I did not try to learn the piece all at once. This way I perfected each part of the song before I continued on.”

Join us in giving Daniel a huge round of applause, and feel free to watch this contest-winning performance. Don’t forget — we have new rules for the Musicnotes.com YouPerform Contest so be sure to submit your performance for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to our store.

Congratulations, Daniel! GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR MUSIC!

As you know, we upload approximately 200 to 300 new sheet music downloads for songs every week. Our inventory spans period music to contemporary, ranging from classical to country, death metal to Christian rock. With almost 90,000 sheet music downloads, if you have a song you need sheet music for, we probably have it.

To stay in touch with your preferred type of music, you can personalize how you receive updates from Musicnotes.com right in your RSS feed reader. We offer over twenty RSS feeds specific to several musical styles. These update once or twice a week, and since they are more targeted you’ll be able to get a better, more readable glimpse of what we’ve added to our site.

If you’d like more personalized updates, this is definitely one way to go about it that doesn’t require you to have a newsletter sign-up. Also, don’t be afraid to ask us for your favorite song’s sheet music if you can’t find it by artist or song title. We take your requests seriously.

Here’s a couple of our RSS feeds specific to new, musical styles that you can add to your reader:

• New Broadway Sheet Music Releases
• New Christian Sheet Music Releases
• New Movie and TV Theme Song Sheet Music Releases
• New Classical Sheet Music Releases (for Piano)
• New Jazz Sheet Music Releases (for Piano)

To send your sheet music suggestions to us, feel free to use Musicnotes.com Sheet Music Suggestion Tool. Stay “in tune” for more updates about Musicnotes.com personalization and ways you can interact more with the music.

Download Free Sheet Music

We also have In the Hall of the Mountain King available as a Guitar Guru free tab and the corresponding guitar sheet music.To learn more about In the Hall of the Mountain King, we provided a small history of the song on the Free Sheet Music Download page.

I hope you take advantage of this month’s spooky favorite!

Check ‘em out:

• Ingrid Michaelson: "The Way I Am"
• Ingrid Michaelson: "Breakable"
• Coldplay: "Violet Hill"
• Regina Spektor: "On the Radio"
• Death Cab for Cutie: "A Lack of Color"
• Death Cab for Cutie: "I Will Possess Your Heart"
• Augustana: "Sweet and Low"
• Mat Kearney: "Won’t Back Down"

Check back soon as we post more songs from Coldplay’s upcoming album, Viva La Vida and more Ingrid Michaelson sheet music!

The Musicnotes Song of the Year Award is presented each year to the songwriter and publisher of the best-selling sheet music for a song made popular in the previous calendar year.  In 2007, this song was "Hey There Delilah," the breakthrough hit by veteran Chicago band, Plain White T’s.

The award was given to Tom Higgenson, the songwriter for "Hey There Delilah," WB Music Corp., Higgenson’s publishing administrator, and Alfred Publishing for their work on the arrangement of the song’s sheet music and guitar tablature.

"Thank you so much for this!  The fact that so many people wanted to learn "Delilah" is a huge honor," said Higgenson.  "I hope that it continues to touch more people when they play it."

Featured on both their third and fourth albums, All That We Needed and Every Second Counts, the song was also a number one Billboard hit, the most-played radio song in July 2007, and the most-downloaded song in iTunes history, before being replaced by Sean Kingston’s "Beautiful Girls."

"Alfred Publishing is excited to be part of the process of getting sheet music like this into the hands of fans everywhere," said Ron Manus, Executive Vice President of Alfred Publishing.  "The Plain White T’s hit ‘Hey There Delilah’ has been a longtime favorite here at Alfred, and we are privileged to be able to work with Musicnotes, Tom Higgenson and WB Music Corp. to make this hit a best-seller.  It’s an honor to know that partnerships like this can be utilized to further our goal of helping individuals to learn, teach, and play music."

Musicnotes, the leading online digital sheet music publisher and reseller, has previously presented awards to Vanessa Carlton ("A Thousand Miles"), Linda Perry (Christina Aguilera’s "Beautiful"), Evanescence ("My Immortal"), Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd and Jeff Hanna ("Bless the Broken Road") and Daniel Powter ("Bad Day").

About Musicnotes: Musicnotes, Inc. offers an online catalog of nearly 80,000 digital sheet music titles, built on the strength of content agreements with Alfred Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Publishing, BMG/Universal, Disney Music Publishing, peermusic, Word Music, EMI Christian, Bug Music and many others. Musicnotes was also recently selected as one of the Top 500 Online Retailers by Internet Retailer Magazine.
On the Web: http://www.musicnotes.com.

About Alfred: Since its inception in 1922, Alfred Publishing remains dedicated to helping people experience the joy of making music. With hundreds of expert authors and composers backed by a talented staff in seven offices worldwide, Alfred publishes educational, reference, pop, and performance pieces for teachers, students, hobbyists and performers spanning every musical instrument, style, and difficulty level.

Alfred currently has over 45,000 active print, DVD, software, general MIDI, audio CD and enhanced CD titles in circulation throughout the world. Titles represent a full range of musical tastes and styles, including the works of George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Henry Mancini, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Madonna, Green Day, and hundreds more. In addition to its own titles, Alfred distributes works from the National Guitar Workshop, the Dover Music catalog, and Faber Music.

Musicnotes Media Contact:
Bill Aicher
Director of Marketing
aicher@musicnotes.com or 608-662-3660

If you’d like to learn to play this hot new piano track, you can see a free preview or order the full piece here.

Haven’t heard the song? Check out the music video:

Hollywood’s Not America

If you haven’t heard the song yet, check out the official music video:

Sara Bareilles – "Bottle It Up"

Are there any other Sara Bareilles songs you’d like to see sheet music for?  Post your requests in the comments below.

You can get it here: http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=mn0064419

You can download the free sheet music, tab and Guitar Guru Sessions at our free page.

And if you’re trying to remember the song… check out this rendition for a refresher course.