What belongs here

Commons Music engraves melodies it may engrave, in its own notation. It does not host someone else’s score, scan, or recording.

In

Silent Night is the 1818 melody by Franz Xaver Gruber. The English verse is John Freeman Young’s, from 1859. The notes on this site are the soprano line of a transcription that was released to the public domain, re-engraved here. Mary Had a Little Lamb uses the traditional tune also called Merrily We Roll Along, and Sarah Josepha Hale’s 1830 poem. A second circle of the same letter is a held word.

Our engraving of those lines is CC0. You can copy it.

Out

A song is not here because it is famous. The Wheels on the Bus was published in 1939 and is still in copyright in the United States, so it is not here, even though a labeled-key primer prints it. Arrangements, method-book pages, and audio recordings stay out even when the underlying melody is old.

The same files as the page

Each piece is a JSON file: pitch, duration in ticks, and an optional syllable. A print engine can read that file and draw paper. This site reads the same file and draws the screen. Adding a piece is adding a file that names its source and why the melody is free to engrave.