I grew up playing the trombone quite a bit. Although I only pick mine up a few times a year at this point, I still consider it my favorite instrument. Sometimes I’ll hear a modern song that strikes me as a good pick for a trombone solo/duet that I want to try and play. Here is a short guide that will allow you to find sheet music for trombone (or any instrument) for popular melodies.

MuseScore is an amazing free program for music composition. The community also has an extensive library of existing sheet music that you are able to find. The deal sealer here is that MuseScore can easily change the sheet music properties like clef, octave, or key signature with just a few key strokes. This allows you to essentially find free sheet music for any popular song.

I heard this song “Panic! At The Disco: Death Of A Bachelor” last night.

After many replays, I thought to look for it on MuseScore and found the sheet music for the melody.

This downloads and opens in the MuseScore program as treble clef, so my first goal is to change the clef to bass. Under palettes on the left, there is a section for “clef”. Drag the bass clef symbol onto the sheet music’s treble clef symbol to change it.

Woah! I can’t play notes that high. Use ctrl+a to select all of the notes. Then hit ctrl+(plus sign)+down to lower every note by an octave.

Perfect! Er… Well, it was sounding good until I got to the chorus, I still can’t hit those high notes with my chops this out of shape. Here I select only the chorus notes by clicking on the first note in the chorus, then click on the last note in the line while holding shift.  This selects the range of notes and then allows me to punch the same key combo above ctrl+(plus sign)+down to lower only these notes another octave.

Okay, I can hit those in my weak state. I need a lot more practice though! Some public humiliation may help.

A lifetime of laughter
At the expense of the death of a bachelor