a question for music teachers

[oxocube]

Do you think its okay to download sheetmusic from the internet? I've just discovered you can do this for pieces by certain composers who have been dead for centuries as copywrite rules no longer apply. I'm learning piano and have quite a few books which I have bought on my teacher's recommendation, but think its great to be able to download a few pieces I really love to try out alone.

Do music teachers or musicians generally do this? If yes, do you have any good websites I could look at? Or is it considered 'not the done thing'!

TIA

It is not quite correct about copyright rules not applying.

There is a booklet about music publishing, however the law has not quite caught up with the computer age and it mostly covers photocopying.

You can for example handwrite our a piece of music quite legally but it is not 100% clear whether legally you can do this on a computer using some of the music software available.

Teachers would not download music unless it was a paid for copy on the publishers website as for things like examinations and festivals you have to provide original copies. However you are allowed to make copies for study purposes but the percentage of a work you can copy is limited eg. in a book of songs you could copy one song to study but you could not copy a whole piano sonata.

Oxo I play piano and would be very interested in getting my hands on some new music so tell me what sites you are using please, my music teacher is making a killing selling me books that I might only use for 1 piece!

Oxo, tbh, I don't think you are going to get raided from the vice squd for downloading sheet music. I would think it highly unlikely anyone will know or care!

Multitasker, the only two sites I've been to so far are www.sheetmusic1.com and www.pitt.edu/-deben . They have classics like Fur Elise, Pachalbel's Canon, some Mozart sonatas, supposed to be level 3 whatever that means (although I am struggling with them!)

How long have you been playing, if you don't mind me asking? I just started in September with my daughter's piano teacher who is wonderful. We're using the Alfred series, so I have the Adult Beginner course and an Alfred classics book which has a mix of popular tunes and some classics with easier arrangements. Do you find you have to practise a lot? I'm doing at least an hour a day at the minute, usually two - its been a life-long ambition to play piano so I don't want to waste the opportunity although the housework has been sorely deglected