Tuesday 1 October 2013

PURCHASING SHEET MUSIC for MALAYSIANS

Anyone is frustrating about where to purchase sheet music in a cheap and affordable price? 
Here are a few choices in my one-year purchasing experience.
Firstly and most important thing is search online for scores that you need, search public domain SM sites, biggest being IMSLP.If you like public domain Bach, Beethoven or Chopin, here is your excuse not to purchase dear urtexts. There are also a lot of great music among them exclude the great composers.

Secondly, if one like to purchase a physical copy instead of printing out (regarding paper size and binding purposes), many music learning centers offer well-known titles like the Alfred piano courses (mostly junked with disgusting Czerny etudes, which I deterred the most), Henle or Wiener urtexts (very few), and A LOT of examination related material, such as past year exam papers, scales and arpeggios, exam pieces, just to name a few. I think these will probably fit one shelf. There are also a lot of beginner's course music book (1-10!!) published by various (money-earning) publishers and pop/jazz music.If one need to purchase Henle urtexts, there is a piano-selling shop in PJ (Wagner piano), they are the distributors of Henle in Malaysia.

Thirdly, and the most preferred way, is by purchasing sheet music online.
bookdepository.com, first recommended site because of its free delivery worldwide and very good customer service. I got 2 sheet music books for free! just because of page flips and ink splits. They also sell Henle and other urtexts (well-known) with discounts. It is double saving!The only problem is they shipped very slowly, like 1 month or more to Malaysia.Do not order for urgent purposes.
amazon.cn, second recommended site, no second Chinese site sell cheaper than amazon.The delivery fee from China is the most considered problem because after conversion plus delivery, the ratio will be 1:1 with ringgit malaysia, and this is an extremely disgusting case that happen only in Malaysia. Amazon.cn offer its shipping at 80 yuan per book to Malaysia, that is about 40 ringgit malaysia.  It sounds expensive BUT the good thing is a set of books is counted as one book!! and there is fortunately several good urtexts are selling in sets, they are Chopin National Edition by Jan Ekier and Durand Debussy complete piano works in 8 volumes. Those can be counted as ONE book. Express shipping doesn't costs much so I will always choose it. BEWARE of the currency conversion from yuan to RM, it matters much depends on banks.
Here are other sites that are worth to visit: prestoclassical.uk, sheetmusicplus.com but only at urgent purposes, they have a greater variety than bookdepository but their shipping and price of books are very much expensive. Just compare various websites for the price (not to name) or try to search for help in music-related forums.

FOURTH, obscurest way to obtain sheet music but worth a try. If the price of selling of a particular (very hard to find) sheet music is unreasonable, you can try to contact any FOREIGN libraries to see if they have public domain editions of it to scan, this is just for the rarest case if the music you want isn't available in modern editions. I bear no hope to visit ANY Malaysia's libraries for music, it's just a mere waste of time.

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