If you are looking for free high quality ragtime piano, stride piano,ragtime orchestra or early jazz orchestra sheet music and audio files you have come to the right place.

The Piano/Ragtime page contains 321 ragtime music sheets and quality audio mp3 files. During the ragtime craze between 1898 and 1923 some 2000 ragtime pieces were composed and the ones presented here represent the best of them. Many were recorded on piano rolls and where available they have been converted to audio files. The undisputed ragtime composers were Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb and James Scott but a large number of other composers are represented as well.

Classical ragtime is a structured format and played as written as opposed to early jazz (between 1915 and 1930), which was highly depended on improvisation.

The Piano/Stride page contains 18 compositions by Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and many others. For copyright reasons only pieces composed up until 1931 are included. This is the new part of this site that will be enlarged through coming years.

Most ragtime pieces were written for piano but in many cases also arranged and published as so called stock arrangements for orchestras and brass bands.

The Orchestra/Ragtime page contains 180 such arrangements for orchestras and brass bands.

The Orchestra/Early jazz page - containing 27 pieces - is different as early jazz bands repertoire were not based on written music but on arrangements where the individual musicians had large freedom to collective improvisation. For some successful jazz bands - like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Mortons Red Hot Peppers - contemporary third party arrangers tried to publish arrangements that could be played by other orchestras. Early jazz arrangements differ from ragtime arrangements mainly because the string section of ragtime arrangements is dropped and replaced by a saxophone section.

All orchestral and brass band arrangements are presented as virtual recordings (see the About page for more information) and the complete score for all instrument parts.

Finally, on the About page I give some background to the music on this site and how and why it was made.

Ragnar Hellspong
Krusenberg, Sweden