A store containing 300,000 digital sheetmusic pieces and a free app that will play your purchased music or display your own imported PDFs.
The App can be displayed on your phone or tablet which will display the music with an option to play a midi audio file. There is also a viewer that can be downloaded from the store to view your PDFs on your computer, which will also enable the Midi playback. I’m not sure whether the pieces could be viewed on other PDF viewers such as Adobe.
Styles in the store include Jazz, Classical, New Age, Easy Piano, Beginner notes, Broadway, Country and Christian. At the time of writing, artists in their top 50 include Leonard Cohen, Christina Perri, John Legend, Coldplay, Yiruma, Adele, La La Land, John Lennon, Ed Sheeran and many more.
When you are looking at a piece of music, the first page is available as a preview. I opened up the top piece, at the time of writing, which was Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. I was met with the first page preview in full screen size. The midi playback was ok – a little corny sounding, but it does the job. There’s a link to the official video of the song on Vevo which will also help with your comprehension of the song if you were not familiar with it.
There is also a link which gives you the full product details – the instruments, vocal range, original key, price, number of pages and customer review. You are permitted one print of the piece, but you have the digital copy for life which you can view when you log on to the website or via the app. The price for this piece (at the time of writing) is £4.23 ($5.5). Initially that seems expensive, but there are some good enhancements to the music.
You can change the key, tempo of the playback and also highlight or draw on the piece. You can also break the song into sections and the midi will play that section only. This is useful for learning difficult parts within a song.
Payment can be made via Paypal or a credit card. There’s also an option to join the digital discount club for $7.99 a year or $0.99 a month saving you 10{455065614084d52a52b6503b0dd540273011d0059da42457a63ab2d05f0df802} on your orders. Maybe worthwhile if you intend downloading lots of music, but not for me.
There are 60 free pieces with the app covering various styles and instruments. These are there to familiarise yourself with the app. Note you cannot transpose these pieces, only those that you have purchased. The range includes examples of rudimentary pieces (Eg London Bridge is falling Down) if you would like to encourage your kids to play. Other examples include classical and folk music. The full version of Scot Joplin’s “The Entertainer” was available as well as a piece from Chopin.
Is it better value to buy a book?
If you prefer buying separate copies and prefer them digitally, then this will suit your needs. I guess the price premium is for the midi playback and the ability to transpose. I found a Leonard Cohen book on Amazon for £13 with 20 of his best known songs.
I may buy the odd piece for my digital collection. Sometimes I may only like one or two songs from an artist, so this would still be cheaper than buying a whole book.
A comprehensive digital store and clever tool worth investigating.
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