Scores

Type in a keyword (geographic region, composer name, genre, etc.) in the SFU Library Catalogue. Limit your results to scores by selecting the Scores option under the Resource Type.

Guides

• Behind bars: the definitive guide to music notation [print]
• How to write for percussion: a comprehensive guide to percussion composition [print]
• The reel world: scoring for pictures [print]
• Writing about music: a style sheet [print or online]

Databases

American Music Center Online Library
"The online library and listening room that provides immediate access to scores, streaming audio, and vital information about music by American composers."

Canadian Music Centre
Scores and recordings of music by Canadian composers. Listen to thousands of archival recordings by Canadian composers on "Centrestreams." Sounds New is the official podcast of the CMC.

Classical Music Library
Medieval to contemporary music. Includes full-text music scores and manuscripts, playlists, and streaming audio tracks.

Music Online: Classical Scores Library

Open access resources

African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
Consists of over one thousand pieces of original works that have been recently digitized.

Choral Public Domain Library
An extensive collection of choral scores.

Early Music Online
The British Library has approximately 10,000 musical compositions from European and some Asian composers.

Eastman / Sibley Music Library
Developed by the University of Rochester, this resource has well over ten thousand entries for sheet music.

Europeana
Find scores for thousands of pieces of sheet music by European musicians.

Frédéric Chopin (University of Chicago Library)
This collection contains nearly five hundred printed editions of Chopin's early works.

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) / Petrucci Music Library
Search through thousands of free scores from people all over the world.

Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)
This database has an extensive collection of different sheet music genres.

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music Collection
American music from the eighteenth to twentieth century.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885
Nearly fifty thousand pieces of sheet music make up this collection of early popular music in America.

MusOpen
​Search by composer, instrument, period, or form.

Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA)
A resource dedicated to all things related to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Sheet Music Consortium
This website was designed by numerous libraries with the goal of building an open collection of sheet music.

Sheet Music from Canada's Past
Contains music from before 1900 up until 1920. Instructions on how to search the database are included on the website.

Sound recordings, films, videos, DVDs

To find physical or digital recordings in the library's collection, type in a keyword (geographic region, composer name, genre, etc.) in the SFU Library Catalogue. Limit your results to scores by selecting the Audio Visual option under the Resource Type.Finding music online

Databases available via the Library

DRAM
High-quality streaming access to recordings by New World Records, CRI and other important labels. Includes folk, opera, jazz, musical theatre, contemporary and electronic music.

Naxos
Streaming access to more than 71,000 CDs. Includes classical, world music, jazz, film music, folk, new age, and spoken word. 

Smithsonian Global Sound
Music from around the world. Includes sound effects and spoken word recordings.

Sound Ideas Sound Effects Libraries
Sound tracks of sound effects CDs produced by Sound Ideas. Use it to identify the CDs that have the sounds you need, then search the library catalogue with the TITLE "Sound ideas" to find out which of the CDs are available in the SFU Library.

Selected sound web sites

Art of the States
"Listen to new music from the US." A Production of WGBH Radio Boston.

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
University of California at Santa Barbara Libraries have created a digital collection of over 6,000 cylinder recordings. They can be freely downloaded or streamed online.

HD Classical Music
Classical music under an open copyright license. 

FindSounds.com
Audio files of many different sounds.

Filmsound.org
All aspects of film sound design.

The Virtual Gramophone
Canadian Historical Sound Recordings. "...a multimedia Web site devoted to the first half-century of recorded sound in Canada."