In recent years, surveys have shown that almost 95% of Americans listen to music on a regular basis. They’ve also suggested that the average American spends more than 25 hours each week listening to music.
As a result, you could say that almost everyone in this country is a “music lover.” But if your love of music goes beyond the average person’s love of it, you might want to put together a music library complete with sheet music for all your favorite songs.
This kind of music collection will help you take your love of music to the next level. It’ll also make it easier for you to find new music to add to your library over time.
Today, we’re going to touch on some of the ways in which you can expand and archive a music library. Take a look at how to do it below and then get started.
Start by Finding a Place to Put Your Music Library
If you’re going to build a great music library, you’re going to need to devote some space to it. So you should start by looking for the perfect place to put your music library.
You don’t necessarily need to devote an entire room in your house to your music library. But you should give it at least a whole corner in your home office so that it has some room to breathe and grow over time.
You’ll also have a much easier time finding sheet music in your music library when it’s confined to a specific space. It’ll prevent sheet music from getting lost in the shuffle when it’s strewn all over the place.
Bring Together the Sheet Music That Will Make Up Your Music Library
Once you know where you’re going to put your music library, you should bring all of the sheet music that you own to that portion of your house. The simple act of bringing your sheet music together will start to bring your music collection to life.
If you already have the sheet music somewhat organized, great. You won’t have to do too much work to create a great music library.
But if you essentially have a tall stack of papers featuring all your sheet music, it’ll be a different story. You’re going to need to work a little harder to get your music library as organized as it needs to be.
Organize the Sheet Music for Your Music Library by Genre
There are a million and one ways to organize the sheet music that goes into a music library. You’re welcome to take just about any approach that you would like. But we’re going to make one suggestion that we think will help you organize your music library.
You should think about organizing your sheet music by music genre. This will involve making one pile for classical music, another pile for musical scores, etc.
This is an easy way to break up your music library so that things are easier to find. Instead of having to rifle through every single piece of sheet music that you have when you need to find something, you can simply head over to the genre that a piece of sheet music fits into and look for it there.
Find the Best Way to Label the Sheet Music for Your Music Library
Labeling the sheet music in your music library in the right way is going to be one of the keys to making everything easy to find. The better you are about labeling your sheet music, the more organized your entire music collection will be.
Ideally, you should stick each piece of sheet music into a file folder and write the following on it:
- Title
- Composer’s name
- Year
You should also come up with a specific file number for each piece of sheet music that you own. It’s one more thing that you can do to up the organization of your music library.
Just be sure that you can read whatever it is that you write down on your file folders. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where file folders are getting put back in the wrong spots because of poor penmanship.
Put the Sheet Music for Your Music Library in Order
After you’ve clearly labeled your sheet music, you can begin to put the sheet music itself into order. Some people like to order sheet music by title while others prefer to do it by the composer.
You’re free to do either of these things. It’s really going to be a matter of personal preference as far as how you choose to place your sheet music in order.
What’s important is that you find a system that works for you and your music library. You should understand this system and be able to use it to get quick and easy access to sheet music when you want it.
Place the Sheet Music for Your Music Library Into Filing Cabinets
When you get to this point in the music library organization process, you should head out and get your hands on some filing cabinets. These filing cabinets will provide your sheet music with a home.
You should put the filing cabinets into the place that you’re going to use to create your music library and begin filling them up. You should use a different filing cabinet for each music genre or, at the very least, limit each filing cabinet to just two or maybe three genres.
Once you have your filing cabinets filled up, you should create labels for them so that you know which sheet music is in which filing cabinet. Then, you should put yourself to the test. Pick a random piece of sheet music that you want to find and go look for it.
If you aren’t able to find this sheet music in under a minute or two, you might want to rethink your music library. It might need to be organized in another way to make sheet music easier to find.
Create a Digital Library Collection for Your Sheet Music
If you go through the trouble of putting together a physical music library, you might wonder why in the world you need a digital library collection, too. But trust us: It’s going to be worth it!
There will be times when you’ll want to check to see if you have a particular piece of sheet music in your music library. And it would be way easier to figure it out by putting a digital library collection to good use.
Your digital library collection doesn’t have to be too fancy. But it should include a spreadsheet that has the details for every piece of sheet music that you own.
When you’re wondering whether or not you have a piece of sheet music, you can search for it in your digital library collection in a matter of seconds and go from there. It’ll be a very useful tool, especially if you have tons of sheet music.
Continue to Add New Sheet Music to Your Music Library
Organizing your music library will do more than just make it simpler for you to find sheet music when you need it. It’ll also give you the motivation that you’ll need to start adding more sheet music to your collection.
You can go out and buy more sheet music if you would like. Or you can get free sheet music online. Either way, what’s important is that you make a concerted effort to beef up your music library.
While building your music library, it would be a great idea to write down the names of any song titles or composers that you would like to add to your collection. You’ll be able to spot the holes in your collection as you make your way through your sheet music.
It won’t be long at all before you’re increasing your love of music by getting introduced to new sheet music. It’ll make you so glad that you took the time to create the ultimate music library for yourself.
Building a Music Library Will Make It Easy to Find Your Sheet Music
The sheet music that you’ve been able to assemble will serve as the lifeblood of your music library. It’s why it needs to be as neat and orderly as it can be.
We’ve provided you with quite a few tips here that should make it possible for you to get a handle on your music library. You can get it more organized and make your sheet music so much easier to find in no time at all.
Would you like to score some more great tips for music lovers? Look for them by reading through other articles posted on our blog.
Read Also: How To Write A Hit Song And Also The Craft Of Songwriting