Play It Yourself: Where to Find Michael Clinesmith's Sheet Music

There’s a particular kind of listener who hears a piano album and doesn’t just want to play it again — they want to play it. Hands on keys, music on the stand, working out the left hand one phrase at a time. If that’s you, this one’s for you: here’s where to find Michael Clinesmith sheet music, what’s available on each platform, and how to get from hearing a track on Piano Reveries to actually sitting down and learning it.

The short version: his catalog is published on Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct, and supporters on Patreon get exclusive sheet music as part of their membership. Three doors, three different reasons to walk through them.

Where Michael Clinesmith sheet music is published

The two big storefronts are the place to start.

Sheet Music Plus is the larger of the two catalogs and the most straightforward way in — search his name and you’ll see what’s currently published. It’s a long-running sheet music retailer, so the buying and downloading experience is exactly what you’d expect: pick a piece, pay for it, print it or load it on a tablet.

Sheet Music Direct carries his work as well and is worth checking alongside it. Catalogs on these platforms don’t always overlap perfectly, so if you’re hunting for something specific and don’t find it on one, look at the other before giving up.

Both stores are worth a browse rather than a single search-and-leave. Publishing on these platforms is a slow accumulation for an independent composer — pieces get added over time rather than arriving all at once — so the catalog you see today isn’t necessarily the catalog you’ll see in six months.

Why sheet music matters for an independent composer

It’s easy to think of sheet music as a relic — a thing that existed before recordings made it unnecessary. The opposite is true, and especially for solo piano.

A recording is a single, fixed performance. It’s Michael’s tempo, Michael’s dynamics, Michael’s rubato on the phrase that wants to breathe. That’s the point of a record, and it’s a beautiful thing. But sheet music is something different: it’s the piece handed over. Once you have the score, the piece becomes partly yours. You choose how fast “Dance in D” dances. You decide how much air to leave in “Lovely Night.” You find the fingering that works for your hands, which are not the composer’s hands.

That’s also how music actually survives. A song that only exists as an audio file lives exactly as long as the platform hosting it. A piece that dozens of pianists have learned lives in the muscle memory of dozens of people. Michael’s music has already made that jump off the page in the real world — his work has been performed live by the Vassar City Band, which is a thing that can only happen because the notes exist on paper for other musicians to read.

For a composer working independently, sheet music sales also matter in a plain economic sense. Streaming pays fractions of a cent. A score sale is a real transaction with a real person who is going to spend hours with the music. It’s one of the most direct ways to support this kind of work, and you get something genuinely durable out of it.

The Patreon route: exclusive scores and works in progress

If you want more than the published catalog, Patreon is the other door. Membership starts at $3/month and includes exclusive tracks and sheet music that aren’t on the retail platforms, plus behind-the-scenes looks at what’s being written.

That last part is the underrated benefit. Watching a piece get built — hearing a rough sketch, then a revision, then the finished thing — changes how you play it. You stop treating the score as a fixed artifact handed down from on high and start hearing the decisions inside it. For anyone learning composition alongside piano, that’s worth more than the sheet music itself.

Patreon is also where support goes furthest. There’s no retailer cut, no platform taking the majority. It’s the closest thing to a direct line between a listener and the person writing the music.

Start by listening: Piano Reveries

Before you buy a score, it helps to know which pieces you actually want to live inside for a few weeks. Learning a piano piece is a relationship, not a purchase — you’re going to hear those same eight bars several hundred times. Pick something you love.

Piano Reveries is the 22-track solo piano album that makes up the bulk of Michael’s recent writing, and it covers a wide range. There’s the driving energy of “Race” and the bounce of “Step and Dance.” There’s warm, open-air brightness in “Play in the Grass,” “The Joy in Life,” and “Joyous.” There are quiet, close pieces — “Jade’s Lullaby,” “For Grandma,” “Minor Major.” There’s the emotional weight of “Working Through It” and “After the Storm.” And there’s the three-movement “Sonatina in G,” the most formally structured writing on the record and the obvious target if you want a real project rather than a single-sitting piece.

You can hear the whole album on the music page, where all 22 tracks are laid out in order with previews. Buying the album directly is the most meaningful way to support the studio, and it’s also the best research you can do before picking a score — you’ll know exactly what you’re signing up for.

Beyond the piano: the rest of the studio

Sheet music is one branch of what Endtime Entrepreneurs does. The studio is also a game developer: the indie RPG Rebellion is on Steam with its own original score, available separately as the Rebellion Soundtrack DLC. Michael writes both the games and the music for them — which is why the soundtrack sounds like it belongs to the world instead of being bolted onto it.

New music, trailers, and playthroughs go up on YouTube, and if you have a project that needs original music — a game, a film, a moment that needs exactly the right four bars — you can hire Michael for a custom score through SoundBetter.

Go find the bench

The empty piano bench at the top of this page is the whole idea. Recordings are lovely, and you should listen to them. But sheet music is an invitation — it says the piece isn’t finished being played yet, and the next performance could be yours.

Start on Sheet Music Plus or Sheet Music Direct, go deeper on Patreon, and listen to Piano Reveries first so you know which piece is calling you. You can also read more about Michael or get in touch if you’re looking for something the catalog doesn’t have yet.