Different Styles

[gusmac]

I'm trying to learn to play different style of music such as pop, rock, blues, jazz, classical period, romantic period and ragtime.

Any suggestions on where I can get some sheet music?

Thanks
A.

[faulty_damper]

You should learn how to read tabs and learn the harmony.

[gregh]

The public library? The music section will have subdivisions by style, and song books will be in their appropriate sections. A larger library might have a more extensive set of sheet music filed separately, ask the librarian. It might not have everything you're looking for, but there will be selections from a number of different styles.

Thinking of that, a college library. A non-student probably won't have borrowing privileges, but usually you can walk in, browse, and copy things. (Sometimes they will lend to members of the community, you can ask.)

Then there's always the music store. Or Amazon. They'll want some money.

[nanabush]

Jazz and Blues.  If I can make a suggestion:  LISTEN to lots of it.  Blues has a certain feel that I find people can't quite hit if they are just 'reading' a blues piece and don't even listen to it.  Learn your 12 bar blues, and some variants, and just listen to the heck out of it.  I'll agree that college/university libraries have HUGE amounts of resources.

You can get a 'real book' for Jazz which is quite inexpensive.  It has hundreds of tunes, the chord chart, and the melodies for standards.  I mess around every once in a while with that, but alas... I don't listen to nearly enough jazz, so my improvs sound like ass and my jazz 'language' skills are terrible.  Haha!

[gregh]

Yeah, what Nanabush said. I had this vaguely unsettled feeling when you listed seven different styles. (For that matter, each of those has varieties, like jazz including but not limited to swing, bebop, cool jazz, and Latin jazz, although blues and ragtime have historically been part of the development of jazz, so it's not like it's all completely unrelated.)

Anyway, you wouldn't really breeze through this style this week and that style that week and then consider yourself to have a good grasp of them.

On the other hand, it would be educational and edifying to have a good resource that compares and contrasts one style against another. Like "These are some characteristics of blues. Listen to it. Now play it. These are some characteristics of jazz. Listen to it. Now play it. See what is similar? See what is different?" If you find something like that, let me know.

[gusmac]

All - thanks for the comments - very helpful.
Cheers
A.