Free Music For Piano, Guitar and Other Instruments From the Mississauga Library

The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) provides the gold standard of music education books with a focus on Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and contemporary style periods. Growing up, I wanted to challenge myself to learn new songs that were playing on popular radio. This would be my reward for completing the required homework from my piano lessons. My only outlet was my measly collection of sheet music which consisted of Bryan Adams’ power ballad (Everything I Do) I Do It for You, Walking on Broken Glass by Annie Lennox, and Vanessa Williams’ romantic ballad Save The Best for Last.

Did you know that you can borrow music books from the Mississauga Library? As residents of Mississauga, we are fortunate to have a FREE resource that would have provided my younger self with a steady stream of Top Songs From the 90s songbooks. The Mississauga Library has an amazing selection of over 400 music books that range in skill level from easy to advanced. A quick search shows songbooks for the guitar, piano, vocal, trumpet, harmonica, keyboard, organ, and so much more. This is a wonderful resource if you want to improve your sight reading skills. Afterall, sight reading is one of the components of RCM exams.

Here’s a look at what I found after a quick search:

For kids who don’t feel inspired by Mozart:

• Disney Movie Favorites

• The Lion King Songbook

• Children’s Songs: guitar chords

• Frozen: music from the motion picture soundtrack: vocal selections

For the teen who prefers popular music over Pachelbel:

• 25: piano, guitar, vocal by Adele

• Made in the A.M.: piano, vocal, guitar by One Direction

• Coldplay for Classical Piano

• Music by the likes of Beyonce, Beck, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, U2...etc.

For the adult learner who takes guitar lessons or piano lessons but wants to play rock songs for enjoyment:

• Grateful Dead: Guitar Anthology

• Indie Rock Sheet Music for piano, vocal, guitar

• 25 Top Classic Rock Songs

• A large collection of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles

For people who love musicals:

• West Side Story - an easy piano play-along

• The Phantom of the Opera

• The Sound of Music

For Hollywood music lovers:

• Romantic Film Music for Piano Solo

• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

• 25 Songs from TV

For those who love classical music:

• The Best of Beethoven (there are a lot of similarly titled collections for the other great composers)

• Piano Masterworks: Intermediate Level

• French Suites by Bach

If you are ready to do a deep dive and you want to ignite your piano practice, follow these steps:

1. Go to https://www.mississauga.ca/library/

2. Type ‘hal leonard’ in the search bar where it shows ‘Search library’. Make sure you’ve selected Catalogue. On a side note, I chose Hal Leonard as the search phrase because Hal Leonard is the largest sheet music publisher in the world.

3. Click on the magnifying glass.

Alternatively, the sheet music can be found under section 782, 786, 787, 788 of the Adult Non-Fiction section. Courtneypark Library holds the largest bank of sheet music out of all the Mississauga Public Library branches. Happy hunting!