You love playing the piano, but finding the right sheet music is hard? OKTAV will solve this problem for you. We want you to enjoy playing like never before!
OKTAV gives you unlimited access to over 20,000 arrangements of all genres and difficulty levels. All you need is your browser. 100,000 satisfied musicians tell us that OKTAV has brought the fun back into playing the piano. With OKTAV’s unique way of making music fun and easy to discover, it will boost your motivation.
“So you’re like Spotify, only for piano sheet music – how is that?”
That’s what people often ask us. Read on and find out exactly how we aim to please you.
1. Everything Here On OKTAV Focuses On You
This is where we differ from all the sheet music services out there. We genuinely want you to become a happier musician. We are not your teacher, more like your companion. Our not-so-hidden agenda is to entice you to spend more time playing your piano. Now, why would we want that for you?
Because we believe that playing the piano is good for you! You relax. You enter a state of flow, you stimulate your brain, you modify your emotions, depending on your choice of music. It’s like a spa for your mind, and you don’t even have to get undressed and share a tub with strangers. The time you spend with your piano and OKTAV is your YOU time.
Do you love to shop for books? We do. So we created OKTAV to give you that bookshop feeling. We want you to feel like you’re browsing shelves! That’s why our pieces of music have the original artwork and a leaf-through-the-pages quality. But you don’t have to get your fingers dusty or leave the comfort of your home for the joy of browsing for sheet music – OKTAV gives you that experience anywhere you like! The best thing is, you don’t have to decide which pieces to buy and take home. They are all yours, at no extra cost!
2. Where Does OKTAV Sheet Music Come From?
We are an officially licensed partner of publishing companies like Universal Music, Faber Music, Bärenreiter, and Alfred Music, and that list is growing. So you’re either getting original arrangements, i.e. exactly the ones you would buy in print, or we have our own experienced in-house arrangers, very skilled in working out arrangements that are fabulous to play. If we can, we offer original and simplified versions of songs.
3. OKTAV Loves Fair Play And Quality
If you’ve ever tried to work with free sheet music, you know that random freebie scores can have unplayable or strange arrangements. That won’t happen with OKTAV, because we check every single piece of music we offer for playability. And we make sure composers and publishers are paid fairly. We also cooperate with composers so they have the chance to publish their music directly on OKTAV – check out Brian Crain or Jacob Koller.
4. OKTAV Loves Any Device
You can use OKTAV anywhere as long as you can access the internet. What are you using OKTAV on? Your tablet? Your laptop? Your phone? Your computer? And what software are you using? Android? IOS? Something weird and nerdy? Being available in your browser is the easiest way of catering to every possible software taste out there, so no, we don’t have an app. Just bookmark us for easy access.
5. How To Use OKTAV
You have probably just subscribed to OKTAV and are looking around. It’s a bit like entering a new apartment, not quite knowing the layout yet. Let us help you explore:
Our sheet music comes in various arrangements
- the piano solo score: beautiful music at your fingertips!
- accompaniment: lyrics & chords
- leadsheets: main melody, lyrics & chords
On your screen. Use OKTAV on any tablet, reader, or device that can browse the internet. That’s why we are a web-platform. Just bookmark us and you’re good to go!
On paper. We are the only digital sheet music service that offers 24 pieces for printout a year – for absolutely no extra money. Of course, you can print your sheet music from any device – choose your next song on your phone and print directly!
- Print out the harder pieces, and get down to really concentrating on practicing them! When you are done, your next two pieces can be printed out.
- We won’t pace you – if you want to use up all your 24 prints in one go (with your yearly subscription), be our guest.
- Should you need even more prints, that’s possible – we will have to charge a tiny amount of money, but still way less than anywhere else, and certainly less than if you bought the print books.
6. Piano Skill Levels
All you need is a basic ability to read notes! We are proud to offer beautiful music for every skill level. You don’t have to be a virtuoso or have started playing in kindergarten to get joy out of OKTAV. And since not all pieces of music are created equal and we want you to know in advance how hard it’s going to get, we have developed our level system.
A lot of frustration comes from trying to play music that’s too hard for you. Yes, we all love Chopin. But if you’re currently at level 30, maybe give it a few years before you tackle his Prelude in F-Sharp-minor Op. 28, Nr. 8 (level 88) and start with pieces that won’t frustrate you – you’ll get better, we promise you that!
To make things even more obvious, we color-code the levels. Those that should be perfect for you are green – if you’re a beginner, those will be easy pieces. If you are advanced, you’ll see plenty of green (all the pieces up to your level). Those pieces that might be a bit of a challenge are color-coded orange. That Chopin piece? A fiery Red (unless you are very advanced and this is your playing level – we bow to you!).
When we recommend music to you, we’ll also take your playing level into account. You will receive recommendations that are perfect for your level and taste. By all means, choose whatever music you like to play, but we reckon acclimatizing yourself at each level and only going higher when you’re comfortable at your current level will bring the most fun.
Now, as is natural, you’ll evolve as a musician. You’ll play better and better. How can you make your skill level go up? Two ways: You can always adjust it manually in your settings if you feel it’s just not adequate. Or you simply choose a piece of music that’s a bit harder than your level (say, in the orange range). We ask you to rate each piece you finish. Was it too easy? Make your level go up and the piece’s level down! Was it too hard? Then rate it the other way around. Was it just right? Both levels remain as they are!
7. The OKTAV Library
Your personal library is the virtual shelf where you can organize the music you have selected. Collect them for playing in the future in “Want to Learn”, mark songs and pieces as “Currently Learning” and stash them in “Already Learned” when you’re finished. You can also create your own playlists here.
8. Twelve Genres to Choose From
Well, of course. The finest of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Chopin and so many more awaits you, but also, for example, music that you can play during service. And we’ll be happy to recommend more!
Hans Zimmer (“Inception”), Yann Tiersen (“Amelie”), John Williams (“Harry Potter”) or Idina Menzel (“Frozen”) are just a few of the composers in that category. You see the movie – we have the music!
On OKTAV, you can play Jazz and Blues to your heart’s content! May we suggest “Misty” by Erroll Garner or “Fly Me to the Moon” – the Frank Sinatra Classic? Have a look at one or more of our jazz playlists.
So what’s your taste in Rock and Pop music? Ed Sheeran or Abba, Jerry Lee Lewis, Billy Joel or Elton John? Whichever legend or hidden gem you prefer – look no further, we’ve got everything you need to rock your piano right here!
Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and all your favorite Swing and Ragtime music are waiting for you! We don’t care whether you prefer “Maple Leaf Rag” or “Summertime” as long as we get to be “the Entertainer”.
May Yiruma‘s river flow in you, may you enjoy Brian Crain‘s famous arpeggios – here, you find music to nourish your soul as well as your fingers.
Whether you feel like belting out Memory (“Cats”) or Summertime (“Porgy and Bess”), you’ll find all the Lloyd-Webber, Irving Berlin or Rodgers/Hammersmith, Cole Porter or Leonard Bernstein you could wish for, and many more – dive right into our selection of stage hits.
Bésame Mucho, La Cucaracha or Por Una Cabeza and many other pieces invite Latin (piano music) lovers to wield their fingers and perhaps also their hips!
This is where you find the music that you’ve loved since forever – we’re talking the likes of “Scarborough Fair“, “O Sole Mio” or “Amazing Grace“. Enjoy our wonderful arrangements of these beloved classics and sing along to the tunes everyone knows!
Kraftwerk, Alan Parker, Avicii or David Guetta, to name but a few, will entice you to evoke powerful sounds on your keyboard, courtesy of OKTAV.
Yes, those songs and tunes that you associate with the festive season. A very, very useful playlist for that special time of the year!
9. But What If You don’t Find a Piece You Are Looking For?
Give us a shout! Let us know what piece you’d like to have scores for, and we’ll try to help you. We publish new sheets on a weekly basis (at least!) – maybe the song you are looking for is already in our pipeline and we’ll release it a bit faster if we know you’re waiting for it. Since we have our own arrangers, we can also arrange it for you within a reasonable time. The only time we’d have to give you bad news is when we have no license for publishing that particular song – but we are working hard on new cooperations.
10. How And When to Start Your OKTAV Experience?
You get a full seven days to test us when you sign up! We want you to make sure you like what you’re subscribing to before you subscribe! The first things we will be asking of you will be about your preferences in music and your playing experience. Then you’ll be shown some example scores, and you get to tell us whether those are too easy, just right or too hard for you to play. This is how we determine your level of piano skills. Then we’ll start with recommendations right away.
Or, if you prefer, start the other way around, start with our recommendations and see whether we offer something you’d like to try, then sign up for your free trial.
We Are OKTAV
We are a bunch of passionate piano players who, in 2017, decided to create the sheet music library we have always wanted. We are also giving you the customer service we have always wanted to receive – write to us, chat with us, tell us your wishes and your worries, and we’ll take care of them (we are best at solving them if they are in the realm of piano playing and sheet music, but we’ll respond kindly to all your other worries, too). We are based in Linz, Austria, which is sort of smack-bang in the middle between Salzburg, where Mozart is from, and Vienna, where Beethoven lived.
Be part of it! Start your free trial at OKTAV today and join 100,000+ piano players who love to discover sheet music.
At OKTAV, we believe in giving you everything you could want when you sit down in front of a piano – we believe in great sheet music, a fantastic browsing and music discovery experience, lots of options to organize your playing, and we believe in having fun. You, on the other hand, don’t have to believe us anything – see for yourself! Test us now with the free 7-day-trial we offer.
