There are now quite a lot of web sites that offer music for download over the internet.  Some of these are completely free, but even those that charge often have free samples as well. 

To take advantage of these, you need a printer to print out the music of course.  You will also need the right software to handle the printing, and to display the music you have downloaded.  Many sites use the Adobe Acrobat format for their music files; the reader for this is also available for free download.  Others require a special program.  For example, the excellent site run for users of the Sibelius music notation program has lots of free stuff, but needs a special program called Scorch to display music written using Sibelius. (See below for more information)

Important Warning:  Sites hosted outside Europe may contain scores which are in the Public Domain in the host country, but are still under copyright in Europe.  It may be illegal to download those in this country.

Here is a selection of the available music web sites:

http://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php3

This site contains a large (and growing) collection of sheet music which can be downloaded for free in PDF (Acrobat) format.

http://www.sheetmusicfox.com/

This is a recently established site (June 2006) which has already built up a large collection of public domain scores - popular as well as classical - and all available for free download.  The scores are in PDF (Acrobat) format.

http://www.music-scores.com/

This site is devoted to classical music scores.  To access all the music on the site, you need to be a member (cost $24.95 per year), but there are quite a lot of free samples, including some good piano music.  The scores are in PDF (Acrobat) format.

http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/?

This is also a classical music site, and used to be free but now operates on a subscription basis.  It does however offer a 10-day free trial.

http://www.scoreexchange.com/

This site has a wide range of different kinds of music for performance, as well as educational scores and theory worksheets.  Quite a lot is available free, and the ‘Scorch’ plugin that you need to display it can be downloaded from the site.

http://www.pianostreet.com/search/form.php

As the name suggests, this site specialises is piano music.  Downloads are free to members, and there is a free membership option which gives access to around 1000 scores.  Files are in PDF (Acrobat) format.