Why do we have fifteen different books for Adele 21? Why do we run to four different places in the store when you're looking for Taylor Swift? Different formats, my friend, different formats. Here's a quick guide to the most common formats you'll see when you're looking for non-classical music:

Piano/Vocal/Guitar (PVG) or Piano/Vocal/Chords (PVC)

This is the format you'll see most frequently in our "personality songbook" section. The music is written for a vocal line with a piano accompaniment, and shows guitar chord charts above the vocal line. Most often the vocal line is written into the piano part so that you don't need to sing along.

Fun fact: Back in the day (the day being the 20s-40s), sheet music and books in this format often gave ukulele chords instead of guitar chords. It's not uncommon to see accordion chords in old sheet music as well. With the insanely high level of interest in ukulele right now, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more music that includes uke chord charts along with or instead of guitar chords. Great book in this format: Adele 21

I had an interesting conversation with one of our regular customers last night. He had stopped in for a few volumes of the gorgeous Mendelssohn Complete Piano works published by Henle and as he was placing them into protective covers, he mentioned seeing Angela Hewitt play a concert from scores on an iPad. 

I know a few performers personally who've used digital scores like this, but Angela Hewitt is the first big-name soloist I've heard of actually using this technology in performance. Now that I'm looking into it more, it seems like the iPad is gaining ground among a wide variety of performers. Specialty music stands and choir folders that fit iPads or other digital readers are making their way into my catalogs. As a purveyor of the printed page, it's a little unnerving.

Last week, I talked a bit about what Urtext editions actually are. So when should you pick Urtext?

I find that Urtext editions are most valuable when performing music from the Baroque and Classical eras. In these time periods, composers did not generally include extensive indications as to dynamics, tempos, or articulation.Student or interpretive editions (Alfred, Schirmer, and International for example) often provide editorial suggestions about these nuances that can be confusing to beginners and downright distracting to more advanced players. As a general rule, composers in the Romantic and Modern eras were more explicit about performance directions, so most editions will reflect the composer’s directions relatively free from too much editorial “creativity.”