Which publishers?  We have catalogues from the majority of sheet music publishers in our database.  The complete list is very long - you can review it here. But there are a few who have not been able to give us their catalogues in computer-readable format.

However, that does not mean we don't stock these publishers! If the publication you want is not in our database, please e-mail details to us and we'll quickly let you know the price and stock availability.

Does it just search the titles?  No.  The program will automatically scan for any occurrences of the keywords you enter in the publication's title, its full description, the composer or author, the artist, and the publisher or CD/DVD manufacturer.

Multiple search words.  When you enter more than one word to search for, the list will show only those publications which reference all of the words you enter.  So if you want to see all sonatas by Mozart or Beethoven, you would have to do two searches - one for "Mozart sonatas" and another for "Beethoven sonatas".  If you entered "Mozart or Beethoven sonatas" you'd only get those publications which included the words "Mozart", "Beethoven" and "sonatas" in their catalogue entries.

Abbreviations and anomalies.  Almost all of the information in the Chamberlain Music sheet music and books database is provided by the publishers, and there is a wide variation in the quality and quantity of information provided.  In certain cases, we've only been given a single line to describe a publication -- sometimes with even the composer's name abbreviated! -- and in others we have several paragraphs of text to tell you all about the publication concerned.  It's therefore useful to try alternative spellings, and abbreviated forms of spellings.  For example, if you are looking for a Mendelssohn work, try entering Mendel* instead of  Mendelssohn -- this would pick any instances where the name has been truncated in the information sent to us by the publisher.

Alternative spellings.  Bear in mind that there may be alternative spellings of composers' names and titles of works -- e.g. Rachmaninov, Rachmaninoff, Rakhmaninov etc.  In fact, our database search function has a built in bit of technical wizardry which will automatically search for alternative spellings for you.  But we have to tell it the alternative spellings in advance, and we may not have found all of them; so it's always worth trying different versions. And as always, if you still can't find what you're looking for just contact us and we'll do our best to help.

We've already told it about the Rachmaninov example above, and a few others also, so in fact in these cases all you need to do is key in Rachmaninov and all the alternatives will automatically be searched for you. But there will almost certainly be examples of alternative spellings that we haven't thought of yet.  If you find any please let us know by e-mail.

Accents.  We have programmed our database to ignore all accented characters (e.g. é, ö, etc.).  So if you're looking for Chopin's Études (for example) please enter the word Etudes without the accented E (even if you're French!) since our database will not find matches for any accented characters.  Similarly, please use ss instead of ß, oe instead of œ, ae instead of æ, and so on.

And finally, if you're still having difficulties finding the publication you want, or if you think there's an error in the database, please do tell us about it, preferably by e-mail.  We really want the Chamberlain Music website to be useful to you, and if you don't tell us about our shortcomings then we won't be able to improve!

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And ...

As well as the 'keyword' search that you've been using, we've recently put together a more structured lists-based utility to help you search for the music you want, here. We hope you find it helpful.