Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum The moods of my sheet music "wish list"

As some of you know, I'm re-building a lost sheet music collection from scratch. Since I'm not terribly rich, this happens in increments of a few books a month, depending on how much money I have to spare (I'm a budget fiend).

My favourite store is in Germany and happily delivers to Ireland. I've an account in their online shop, complete with "wish list" where I collect music to be bought as and when I get to it. As you can imagine, that's quite a collection. One of my favourite pasttimes these days is window(s) shopping and planning what I'll buy next month.

Looking over my list today, I had to laugh: It reflects exactly what mood I was in on a particular day when adding further items - ranking from "let's be sensible and order what I'll realistically be able to play over the next months" (Grieg's Lyric Pieces, earlier Mozart sonatas etc) to "I'm feeling nostalgic today" (stuff I used to play like the Chopin polonaises or nocturnes) to "pure wishful thinking" (Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, Rachmaninov's Moments Musicaux). If I ever catch myself adding Islamey or Gaspard de la Nuit to the list, I'll know I need help.

It's probably just as well that I don't have that much ready money, or I'd buy a lot of stuff I'll later regret! Although, it's a nice thing having the music, if only to "read along" when I listen to a CD.

Just a question... why don't you just download sheet music from the various sites? Classical music is public domain so you probably will find every classical piece as PDF and then you just print it out.

I know, and a lot is available second-hand too! The thing is, it was gut-wrenching to lose the sheet music I had and I'm trying to get the exact editions I used to have - might be silly, but that makes me feel a little better And I'm in no hurry, after all I can't play it all (at least not now, with my hands in a state) at once, so I'm spreading this out and buying a little every month.

I know how it feels, just purchased Chopin Waltzes by Henle just to have it on my piano

I feel the same way about music and books, having lost many of mine too in a move. Like you, I just start slowly buying the exact editions that I had treasured.

Many years ago I bought a number of music books second-hand at one of those 'antique fairs' and now they starting to fall apart. I'll certainly replace 2 of them (John Field Nocturnes and a selection of Dvorak pieces including humoresques) and would prefer the get the same editions again as well. I'm sure there are others out there, but I think it's a kind of sentimental attachment.

I personally can’t stand piles of unbound paper. It’s hard to keep organized and it makes it difficult to find what your looking for, also, I find loose paper doesn’t want to stand up on its own on the music desk. And maybe most importantly, I just love books.

I believe cmb13 has been solving this by binding his own sheet music books.

I used to have them in binders (folders), and I'm not ruling this out altogether - I also have an iPad and play some stuff from there. But I do want to replace at least part of my own collection of sheet music books eventually, so - they're not mutually exclusive.

I just mentioned buying new sheet music because that's where the wish list and my modest/nostalgic/megalomaniac moods show so beautifully (or alarmingly, depending on your viewpoint ).

I think there is simply a gulf of (non)understanding between those who like to print off sheets from the internet, and those who treasure nice editions.

ETA: I print out sheets I’ve edited for myself, and worksheets I intended to write on. And I will play from the iPad. But I loathe messy stacks of crumpled paper.

I do both. For music that I'm not overly serious about, I'll just print it out and then comb bind it. (I have an inexpensive comb binding machine and I love it!)

But for music that I truly care deeply about (such as Bach's WTC and Beethoven's Sonatas) I spend some money and get a nice, durable edition.

Now that I could get behind. It’s shuffling through stacks and crumpled sheets I hate.

For me, this just doesn't cut it (though it would be better than not having the scores at all). As others have mentioned, those PDF printouts won't stand up on the music stand, at least without some support system, you have to bind them, etc. You could use nice, heavy bond paper and good binding, but then you might as well buy a printed copy. Also, sometimes the printed versions available on IMSLP aren't the easiest to read.

I have WLS* as well. Some days I look at my wish list and say, what the heck was I thinking. Other days I say to myself, what am I waiting for and pull the trigger on the purchase. Hey, all that money I save by not buying coffees at the coffee shop pays for it, right?






*Wish List Syndrome

Heavyweight inkjet paper (I have an inkjet) does stand up nicely on the music stand. I use it for Irish traditional music where I’ve transcribed variations and ornamentation.

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I do a lot of wish list shopping too. But whenever I end up with extra money for the month, straight to the wishlist I go. It’s surprisingly easy to fishing out the stuff I really want.

I don't begrudge the money spent on nice scores - after all (like dogs) they're for life, not just for Christmas. (For our friends outside the UK, that's a commercial shown on British TV every Christmas to dissuade people from unthinkingly buying a puppy as a Christmas present for a kid........).

Unlike trashy novels: whenever I'm in a hotel or a holiday resort, I always pick a few up from other tourists who've finished with them. I never have to buy my own pulp fiction to while away the hours at the poolside .

With a new sheet music score, you can always just (sight-)read through it, decide it's too easy/hard/boring, then keep it until you're more mature/virtuosic/decrepit and then profitably dig it out and......read through it again. Maybe even learn and perform it for admiring audiences all over the world......

I have volumes of music I don't particularly like (like the complete Haydn sonatas), but I can always use them for sight-reading fodder, if I'm really bored .

I think most people just put printed sheets in 3 ring binders. Extremely simple. No especially heavy paper or fancy binding necessary. There's also a lot of free music on the internet that's out of print and not available any other way.

I've used 3-ring binders with printed pdfs and I find that that the sheets don't lie flat due to the 3-ring binder. I write on my scores and I dislike having to worry about poking my pencil through the paper or with erasing. If you have an inch or so of printouts, then it's less of a problem except for the front and back of the binder. There are also occasional problems with punching out a note here and there, depending on what kind of margins the printout has.

Certainly for the odd piece here and there (including the out-of-print stuff), printouts do the trick.

FWIW I use heavy paper, not white (more like Ivory or some form of gray), and I use a coil binding system. I don't have a coil binding machine - for about $5, Office Depot will hole punch up to 500 pages. I took a ream of good paper, had them coil bind punch it, and periodically print and add what I printed to my binder.

I even scan and print from my Henles for this purpose. I have a "repertoire" binder filled with all the stuff I want to learn. Some other music that I don't care about, for instance what I use for sheet reading practice, I just put into a 3 ring binder with cheap paper.

I have at least 70 three-ring binders of music and have never had any problem with pages lying flat, poking pencils, or erasing.