sheet music

Best Sheet Music Collections for Beginners, Intermediate, and Experts (Piano, Guitar, Violin)

In this article, you'll find piano, violin, and guitar arrangements for all different skill levels!

Musicnotes

• 9 min read
piano violin guitar

Table of Contents

  1. Best Guitar Sheet Music For Beginners
  2. Best Guitar Sheet Music for Intermediates
  3. Best Guitar Sheet Music for Experts
  4. Best Piano Sheet Music For Beginners
  5. Best Piano Sheet Music for Intermediates
  6. Best Piano Sheet Music for Experts
  7. Best Violin Sheet Music for Beginners
  8. Best Violin Sheet Music for Intermediates
  9. Best Violin Sheet Music for Experts

One Music With a Thousand Cadences

Amy Lowell wrote her poem "Listening" as an ode to love as a form of music. As a musician, you understand her metaphor about the desire to let "forth the pent-up melody inside" with your music on guitar, piano or violin. However, it's crucial to develop technical ability alongside melodic and lyrical techniques, whether you're an experienced artist or just learning how to read sheet music.

The right sheet music at the appropriate level supports technical development so that you challenge yourself to grow while establishing your technical skills. The songs in this collection challenge you to grow as a musician and allow you to share your musical heart and mastery with your listeners.

Best Guitar Sheet Music For Beginners

When you're learning how to read guitar sheet music, you want to begin with songs that have a combination of enduring popularity and practice in fundamental skills. For example, Van Morrison's ubiquitous "Brown-Eyed Girl" consists of only four chords: G major, C major, and D major, with an E minor chord in the chorus. Since you've almost certainly heard this one (and perhaps sung it?) in one of its over 10 million plays on the radio, you can learn the familiar chord pattern and calypso rhythm and build your confidence quickly.

The best easy sheet music for beginners on the guitar should involve straightforward and basic techniques that are a pleasure to perform, whether for yourself during a practice session or with an audience. These rock and roll songs also encourage you to practice aligning your singing with your playing, as the verses and choruses are familiar and easy to pick up:

Best Guitar Sheet Music for Intermediates

You feel confident in playing your basic scales, barre chords and open chords, so you may also want to stretch your skills further by reading sheet music that is more complicated. Extend your fingerpicking technique with Paul McCartney's "Blackbird," inspired by  The Little Rock Nine, or Jim Croce's bittersweet story song "Operator." Or, take on the Zeppelin version of a folk song with the deceptively simple "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You," which requires a mix of precise playing and emotional performance.

David Bowie's quirky "Space Oddity" includes an F major 7 with an E bass combination that takes practice, and you can really push yourself with the tricky barre chord of F minor that shows up a few times. Keep things uneasy with The Eagles's "Hotel California," and rock out on a real guitar (as opposed to air guitar) on that amazing solo riff.

The rock and roll artists of the 1960s and 1970s completely revolutionized guitar playing, so it makes sense to focus on the increasing complexity of these guitar solos as you continue to advance your skills.

Best Guitar Sheet Music for Experts

Expert guitarists have confidence in their ability to move between chords, fingerpick with dexterity and strum rhythms in time with various styles and know how to read sheet music as notation or tablature. Yet, they also continue to search for the edges of their ability and to push past them.

That drive to constantly improve your playing leads you to songs like Mason Williams's "Classical Gas," a collection of intricate chord shapes at a super-fast pace, with thumb picking and palm-muting. Speaking of tough thumb picking, "Never Going Back" by Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham employs polyrhythm: Your thumb maintains 4/4 time while your fingers alternate between 2/4 and 3/4. Expert guitarists should give these songs a try:

Best Piano Sheet Music For Beginners

When you learn how to read piano sheet music, you're opening the door to an incredible world of music. Even beginners can learn anything from classical to modern pop with a suitable arrangement, and exploring that diversity of sounds and techniques is an integral component of your learning process.

For example, to form your internal rhythmic sense while training your ears in graceful dynamics, learn the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." The lilting and beautiful melody maintains a repetitive pattern without rapid or considerable shifts in hand position, and the adagio sostenuto beat encourages attention to dynamics. That slow, steady beat also gives you time to address the accidentals scattered throughout the piece. Along with "Moonlight," these are the pieces you need for your beginner's repertoire:

Best Piano Sheet Music for Intermediates

Intermediate piano music consists of levels 3 to 10, where 3 to 6 constitute early intermediate pieces, ideal for students with a solid foundation in essential piano technique and who know how to read notes on sheet music. Middle and later intermediate, levels 7 to 10, require students to have greater technical and reading skills. These levels, as you know, are based on a general interpretation of technical, theory and musical skills required by the player.

Thus, at level 4, Beethoven's famous "Minuet in G" affords the early intermediate player excellent practice combining the contrasting techniques of legato and staccato while engaging in long melodic phrases. Stronger intermediate players can extend their range with Beethoven's omnipresent "Fur Elise." The opening bars are familiar to even non-musicians, but the later sections require intermediate to advanced skills that come with extensive practice and understanding of technique.

Intermediate pianists should add these pieces by Beethoven and others to their repertoires to continue to mature their playing:

Best Piano Sheet Music for Experts

When it comes to difficult sheet music, many pianists think of the atonal rhythms, complex poly harmonies and atypical time signatures of many 20th-century composers. For the virtuoso, however, the brilliance of the romantic and baroque composers should top the list of practice and performance pieces. Liszt's "La Campanella," for instance, employs vivacious dynamics, enormous jumps in right hand position, and a lightning-fast allegretto that combines to create the sense of a "little handbell" ringing merrily on a windy day.

Many players consider "La Campanella" one of the most difficult piano pieces to play, and learning it takes experience and practice, even for expert pianists. Likewise, Beethoven's "Piano Sonata No. 29," or the "Hammerklavier Sonata," challenges players to sustain the energy and technicality of the piece for an unusually lengthy performance. By way of example, Franz Liszt himself was the first to perform this piece in a public concert! Add these pieces by Liszt, Beethoven, and others to your collection of difficult music for experts:

Best Violin Sheet Music for Beginners

Violin sheet music for beginners isn't limited to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Lightly Row" (although those are both marvelous options for learning the basics). When you're ready to learn how to read violin sheet music, you can add some familiar standards to your repertoire, such as the thrilling rhythms of Rossini's "William Tell Overture" or the exuberant fun of "When the Saints Go Marching in."

The influential Ninth Symphony came from Beethoven's desire to set Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy" to music that represented themes of brotherhood and liberty. The relatively easy arpeggios of "Ode to Joy" give you a chance to show off your bowing and fingering while also practicing expressive dynamics.

Most of the options here are crowd-pleasers that also support practice with repetitive melodies and toe-tapping familiarity. They also invite practice as duets or small ensembles, so intermediate violinists should find violin sheet music for intermediate players that includes additional violins, voices or other instruments to improve on playing in tandem with other musicians:

Best Violin Sheet Music for Intermediates

Intermediate violinists have mastered the fundamentals of bowing, pizzicato and fingering, and they have spent time reading sheet music as part of their practice. Some of the most beautiful and enduring classical pieces are exemplary options for intermediate players, as are modern theatrical works. Music from the strings of a violin can set us dancing or cause us to weep, and intermediate music gives you the chance to work on expressiveness in your playing.

John Williams's indelible "Theme From Schindler's List" epitomizes the power movie soundtracks have to immerse the audience in the emotion of a scene. Let your violin sing through the simple harmony and wide intervals that encourage this solo's introspective and sorrowful mood. On the other hand, Bach's "Minuet no. 1" gives intermediate violinist experience with stylistic bowings and slightly more complex rhythms.

From classical compositions to modern film soundtracks, these are the pieces that should form the foundation of intermediate repertoire:

Best Violin Sheet Music for Experts

The most difficult sheet music requires you to be, or to become, the kind of violinist who not only practices until you get the notes right but also until you and your audience experience the fullness of your interpretation. You may be a professional violinist, earning your living with your music, an advanced student stretching your chops to a higher level, or an experienced amateur with a love for the instrument. Whatever your purpose for playing, once you reach this level, you can see how far you've come while also being excited about the wide path of learning before you.

Paganini's notoriously challenging "Caprice No. 24," the last in the series, includes parallel triple stops, enormous arpeggios, spiccato runs and a blinding pace to compel even confident virtuosos to up their practice game. The influential work inspired some of the greatest composers in history, such as Rachmaninoff and Brahmas, to write their own variations on the theme.

Sheet Music For Every Skill Level

Sheet music for your instrument that stirs your soul and challenges your skills offers you a chance to release that "pent-up melody inside." As the player, you are the music, and the songs you choose are the doorway to the multitude of harmonies you contain. Whether you prefer the intense technical challenge of a Liszt or the intensity of a classic rock anthem, your music is the outward sign of your journey toward virtuosity and beyond.

The greatest musicians never stop learning, so visit Musicnotes to find the perfect sheet music for you at your level, from new beginner to virtuoso.

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