Guitar Library
What it’s for
The Guitar Library is over 2,000 pieces of public-domain music for guitar, every one of them graded and every one of them readable and playable in your browser. It runs from Renaissance lute music by Dowland, Holborne and Cutting, through Bach, Sor, Giuliani, Carcassi, Legnani and Tárrega, to Gershwin. Alongside the concert repertoire sit around 1,600 Scottish, Irish and other traditional tunes, most of them from Kerr’s collections: the fiddle and dance music that has been played on every instrument for two hundred years. Kerr’s books add over fifty opera melodies too.
Every piece opens in the Sight Reader, engraved as real notation from the score file rather than a scanned page, with playback, a cursor that follows the music, and adjustable tempo. Each one carries a grade from 1 to 8, so you can choose music at the level you’re working at, and step up a grade when you’re ready.
The library also hosts the Guitar Loot collection: over 400 Renaissance and Baroque arrangements by Eric Crouch, free for anyone to read, with no account needed.
Who it’s for
Anyone who reads, or wants to read, music on the guitar. Students working through the grades will find pieces at every level to read and learn; teachers can find repertoire and set it by grade; experienced players will find a deep well of lute and Baroque music, and the Kerr tunes are a sight-reading resource with no end to it.
Free and Pro
Free Open to everyone, including visitors who aren’t signed in:
- Browsing and searching the whole library
- Reading every piece at Grades 1–3 in the Sight Reader, with playback
- The whole Guitar Loot collection, at every grade
Free With a free account:
- Favourites: star as many pieces as you like
- Practice Lists: up to three named lists of the pieces you can read
Pro Pro:
- Every piece in the library, Grades 1 to 8
- As many Practice Lists as you like, with any piece on them
- Recording yourself against a piece in the Sight Reader (see the Sight Reader Guide)
Getting around
The sidebar on the left takes you to each part of the page: Home, Composers, Periods and Search. Below them are Favourites and Practice Lists (once you’re signed in and have some), My Library, Guitar Loot and GMI Apps. On a phone or a tablet held upright, the sidebar opens from the menu button at the top left.
The page itself runs from top to bottom: the welcome panel, with the number of pieces and composers in the library; the featured composers; the Periods tabs; and All Composers, with the search box.
Finding a piece
Search
Type in the search box under All Composers and the results update as you type. It searches composers and piece titles together, and it doesn’t mind accents or capitals: tarrega finds Tárrega and albeniz finds Albéniz. Use more than one word to narrow it down: dowland galliard finds Dowland’s galliards.
The results show the composers who match and, under Matching pieces, up to thirty individual pieces, each with its grade. Click a piece to open it in the Sight Reader.
Composers and periods
The featured composers are the largest collections in the library, shown with their portraits. Below them, All Composers shows a card for every other composer with four pieces or more, and composers with only a few pieces are listed underneath, under Also in the collection.
Each card gives the composer’s era, their grade range and how many of their pieces are free (gold dots) and Pro (blue dots). The Periods tabs (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th Century, Folk and Operatic) narrow the portraits and the cards to one era; All brings everything back.
A composer’s pieces
Click a portrait or a card to open the composer. You’ll see how many of their pieces there are, how many are free and how many Pro, and every piece in a list you can sort three ways: Grade ▲ (easiest first), Grade ▼ (hardest first) or Most Played.
Each row shows the piece’s grade badge. Gold badges are free to read; blue badges with a padlock are Pro. A few pieces are marked CHORDS or LEAD SHEET: these are chord charts and melody-with-chords arrangements rather than full guitar scores.
Opening a piece
Click anywhere on a piece’s row, or on its ▶, and it opens in the Sight Reader. When you come back with ← Library, the composer you were looking at opens again, so you can go straight on to the next piece.
If a piece is above your plan, the Sight Reader tells you so and offers the way in, rather than opening the score. A small number of pieces are still in copyright in some countries; if you’re in one of them, the library says so when you open the piece.
Favourites and Practice Lists
Once you’re signed in, every piece row has two more buttons:
- ☆ stars the piece into your Favourites. There’s no limit, on any plan. Click it again to take the star off.
- + adds the piece to a Practice List: a named list of the pieces you’re working on, such as Grade 4 exam or Christmas concert. Choose a list, or type a name to start a new one. A list holds up to 100 pieces. On the free plan you can keep three lists, and the + appears on the pieces you can read; on Pro you can keep as many as you like, with any piece on them.
Your Favourites and Practice Lists open from the sidebar. Open a list to see its pieces, read any of them with ▶, or take one off with ✕. From the list of lists you can rename a list (✎) or delete it (✕). They’re kept with your account, so they’re there on every device you sign in on.
The Guitar Loot collection
Eric Crouch has spent years transcribing and editing the lute and Baroque guitar repertoire for the modern guitar, and publishes his arrangements at guitarloot.org.uk. Over 400 of them are hosted here with his permission, on his condition that they stay free to read for everyone. Each score carries his credit and a link back to his site.
Guitar Loot in the sidebar opens the whole collection on one page, composer by composer, with its own search box. Click any title to open it in the Sight Reader. The same pieces also appear in the library under their composers, with gold (free) badges whatever their grade.
Works with
- Sight Reader — every piece opens there, to read, hear and, on Pro, record yourself against.
- Guitar Loot — the free collection on a page of its own.
- My Library — your saved work across the platform.
- Player Projects — Units 1 and 4, Read it and play along (free) and Read it, record it, review it (Pro), start here: you choose a piece at your own grade.
Try it
- Search for banks and braes and open Ye Banks and Braes, a Grade 3 Scottish air that’s free to read. Press ▶ in the Sight Reader and follow the cursor.
- Open John Dowland, sort by Grade ▲, and read the first few pieces in order.
- Choose Periods → Renaissance, then open Guitar Loot from the sidebar: most of those composers are in it, and all of it is free.
- Signed in, start a Practice List called This month and add three pieces at your grade.
