Why is it so easy to find tabs and chords on the web, but not piano sheet music? Whenever I try to find piano sheet music I always find commercial sites, but every fan site out there has tabs and chords for every song. Why is this?
They want you to pay for it. It takes more work to put together sheet music.
Tabs are easy because very few characters are needed to write it.
How do you make a g-clef with the keyboard anyway?
I believe the answer is that if you published sheet music that would undoubtably infringe on the songwriters copyright… however if I just put C#m, Dm, C, G on a website that doesn’t seem to bother anyone…
There is a large commercial market out there for sheet music…
What about MIDI files run through MIDI notation software (I think Cakewalk, MusicTime, etc.) It doesn’t create perfect sheet music, but it’s probably just as close as tabs/chords are.
I’ve used K3v1n’s trick myself. Recently, I’ve been taking up harmonica. I already play guitar and keyboards fairly well. Harmonica is different in that it is keyed, i.e. it doesn’t have all the notes. So, there are plenty of melodies you just can’t play with it, if the melody contains any sharps or flats. (ok, there are bending exceptions, but let’s ignore that for the moment.) Normally I can figure out a song by listening to it and playing along on the guitar or keyboard, but it can take many repetitions, some times many many. Using that process with the harmonica, it takes some effort before I get to the point where I realize the melody is impossible. And that’s a drag.
One solution was to buy sheet music, but since a lot of the melodies are impossible to play anyway, that seems like a big waste. So, I do what K3v1n described: I find a midi interpretation of a song, run it through cakewalk (there are other programs you can get as well), and let it build the sheet music. It does a damn good job of it by the way. Plus, cakewalk can transcribe, which again is important since the harmonica is keyed.