By definition, sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of musical notation. Thus, to be classified as sheet music, paper is to be the medium of notation. In older times, parchments served as the notational medium. Sheet music serves the purpose of recording a piece of music in order to be studied and used for creating a musical performance.
Sheet music is used in most musical performances, even in jazz, which is mostly improvised. Jazz sheet music serves to give basic indications of melodies, changes in chords, and arrangements. A brief overview of the history of sheet music is available online at the Digital Scriptorium of Duke University.
Fake Music
Fake music is another name for a type of sheet music precisely known as a Lead Sheet. Almost confined to vocal music, a lead sheet shows the harmony by placing indications of the underlying chords above the melody. In effect, it can be conceived of as an enhanced vocal part and not a detailed representation of the musical piece to be performed. Jazz sheet music is mostly considered this type.
Online Jazz Sheet Music
Today jazz sheet music is available online both for free and for sale at several site and is very useful for understanding the structure of jazz in written form. www.Sheet-music.8k.com is a good place to start with free previews of jazz sheet music by categories like piano, trumpet, saxophone, and also by providing a search by song, artist, and lyrics. A Top 40 jazz sheet music list is given according to popularity. www.sheetmusic1.com also lists database categories by types of musical instruments.
Jazz Sheet Music Resources on the Web
www.activemusician.com offers a comprehensive stock of jazz sheet music and books with over 2200 items. Products can be searched and browsed in various categories like books, VHS, DVD, instruments, software, and much more. To make a hip choice, lists by bestsellers are also included.
An award-winning site is www.Notz.com which is loaded with special pages of jazz and African music. The pages are translatable into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
And then you have www.Amazon.com for online shopping of jazz sheet music books and CDs.
For the magazine enthusiast, Sheet Music Magazine offers online subscriptions and even online music lessons and www.jazzwise.com is the complete jazz nuts world for all kinds of jazz music. www.NFO.net provides additional resources so that you can sell your own sheet music of all kinds by contacting traders and buyers.
