Any difference between "sheet music" and "music scores"?

    • Sheet music is usually a single song arranged for voice and piano (or instrument and piano or just piano). It may also just be a "lead sheet", containing the melody line, words and chords. The sheets are not bound in any way. They are loose.

    Music scores are usually bound like a book (or connected together in some way) and contain all the parts of the original arrangement. For example, a score to The William Tell Overture will show you the staves (plural of staff) for all instruments in the orchestra.

    Sheet music looks like this:
    SheetMusic.jpg


    A music score looks like this:

    MusicScore.png
     
    A score is the entire set of sheet music for a piece, often indicating the lines of several instruments on one page. Sheet music is just a general term for written music: so for example as a violin player I might buy the sheet music for the violin part in a Mozart piece, without buying the score for the whole piece. There is some crossover: a 'piano score' is the piano part of a given piece. But you can't really describe a flute part as a 'score'.
     
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