Tips & Insights from the Music Room Video Lesson: How to Search for Sheet Music

Hello and welcome.

Today, yes, something very interesting.

We got a lot of people asking us to explain how to search for sheet music on our website.

So today I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to show you how you can search for sheet music on the virtual sheet music website.

So let's dive right in.

Alright so on the virtual sheet music website you can either search your music by keywords or browse the catalogue in several different ways.

A keyword search is well suited if you are looking for something specific like Violin Concerto by Bach or a specific song title.

Alright so let me show you how to do that on the virtual sheet music website. So if you start from the homepage you find the simple search box at the top right here where you can type your keywords.

So for example let's say you want to search for Bach, Violin, Concertos.

Okay, it's giving you a search result of that which is pretty simple, right? What is more interesting is when you start typing for example Bach, Violin is going to suggest you the most common searches. This is something you know we are used to that on Google but it's very handy to have that same feature here on that virtual sheet music.

You can also search for Bach, just Bach let's say and it's going to forward you to the Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated page where you can start browsing and we are going to talk about browsing in a moment. You can also search for specific instrumentation such as for example string quartet, it's going to forward you to the string quartet sheet music or you can search for string quartet Beethoven is going to find all the string quartet music by Beethoven we have and so on. So you get the idea. Besides the simple search right here at the top you can also use the advanced search. Let's say you want to search for Violin classical sheet music at easy skill level. So I'm gonna search for a Violin as instrument and then we select classical as jar and then easy skill level.

So this is pretty well aimed to something very specific and we can find the results right here.

Okay so once you have your search results right here you can of course use all filters right on this left side. We can maybe find just the interactive sheet music so we click interactive and we have filtered out all the items that are not interactive. We can also drill down for more you know detail for a more detailed search so we can filter to have just interacted with fingerings and these are results we get. You can always turn filter off by just clicking on the X right here and so you can get back to the full results and so you have different kind of filters here according to their category and also you have these three tabs at the top which is something useful if you want to filter out the different kind of editions we have. For example in this case most of these results are by virtual sheet music as you can see from the icon right here on the on the right and if you click on the VSM tab you are going to show just virtual sheet music editions and if you want to see all the other publications by other publishers you just click on the other tab you will see you know shot music in this case and that works for any search result list.

Also you can display the results either as a list like in this case or as a table which may be interesting and useful if you want to have a bird view of the results.

Maybe if you're looking for something in this case you know the skill is all the same or let's say you you're searching for generally for violin sonata so you can spot right away the skill level in this case the A is for advanced, I is intermediate and intermediate advanced and you can use so this is easy intermediate so you have a bird view of the results also the price all the rest you can also add to car right here on the icon so then that may be useful different kind of view and of course you can also sort the results by different criteria so by default the results are given by popularity and relevance but you can decide to sort by title for example or you know genre, instruments, composer, skill level and so on and finally you can also search within the results by keywords so it's like a drilling down your search so in this case we were looking for any sonata and you can fill her out I don't know Beethoven and so it's going to show you just the violin sonatas by Beethoven and you can keep drilling like Beethoven sonata and you can type easy and it's going to show you just the easy sonatas by Beethoven for violin we have. What's important to understand is how the results are sorted by default which is as I said the popularity and relevance because sometimes it can give you unexpected results or actually results that seems to be a logical but actually there is a logic behind that so for example let's say you are looking for bassoon concerto okay and as you can see we don't have that many bassoon concertos published on our website so it's going to start showing you the concertos that are actually for bassoon as a soloist as a solo bassoon with accompaniment and then it shows you other concertos that include the bassoon as an instrument like in this case the one of the Brandenburg concertos so that's important to understand even for example at the bottom it shows you also this version of the bassoon concerto K191 by Mozart for piano solo which is a transcription so it's not actually to be played with the bassoon but it's originally for bassoon and so on so just to have an idea and also what's important to understand is that usually we show up at the top of the results our own publications because you know our publications are usually the best ones and are the ones that are free for members so we tend to show those first. Okay so I'm going to move on showing you how to browse.

Browsing is well suited if you are not sure what music you'd like to play and you need different options to choose from so let's say you are more in research mode than search mode so starting from the home page you have different options to browse our catalog you can either just click on these big buttons here as starting points so you have you know popular sheet music categories like free sheet music, easy, classical, wedding and so on by instrument, by ensemble, by genre, composer, artist and skill level.

You can also go under the browse menu right here and choose where you want to start from. Okay so just as an example let's say you are looking for a new flute repertoire but you are not sure of the level you need it for or the genre of it either so you know you are not an advanced player but you aren't a beginner either so I will start from the flute starting page which is you click on flute and then you can look around and see what can fit your needs so I said you are not an advanced or you're not a beginner so you're looking into these new skill level categories so you can start from easy.

Okay let's try easy something easier let's see what I can find of easy here. Okay and I can see the first spot something for flute and trumpet but I'm actually looking for something for either flute solo or flute and piano so this can fit my needs this also can be interesting this is a pretty popular title flute solo these are collections very very very good but let's say yes I want to even flute and clarinet actually I'm not interested in that so I'm going to filter out anything that is not for flute or flute solo so let's see under the filter by ensemble and let's say I want to find something for flute solo okay I'm gonna just filter out everything else out and so I have what I have an easy skill level for flute solo okay it's not that much but it's enough to start with something interesting so let's try something for flute and piano so let's get back and filter by ensemble again and let's find flute and piano right here okay flute and piano we have more stuff I just found what I could try and look at so this is just an example how you can use the browsing system on Virtuosy Music and of course even with browsing you can use all the tools I showed you before for the search results you know the sorting feature that the different kind of view that drilling down within search results the filters I just showed you and all the rest and when you are searching and searching for a while our website is going to ask you if actually you are not finding what you are looking for in that case you can always submit your request by click on this button and you can request the title you are looking for and we'll do our best to find it for you.

Well, all right, so what do you think will you be able to search for sheet music on Virtual Sheet Music? Well I hope so after this video so let me know if you still need any help I'll be happy to get in touch with you personally either post your comments or questions below or send an email to tipsandinsights@virtualsheetmusic.com I'll love to get in touch with you.

All right so I'm done for today, and I'll see you in the next one you

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---