Hal Leonard

Hal Leonard Publishing was founded in 1947 by brothers Harold "Hal" Edstrom and Everett "Leonard" Edstrom and their musician colleague and friend Roger Busdicker in Winona, Minnesota. Roger and Harold both led successful high school bands that played only older music at that time. The two wanted to change that eventually. They invested their talent and experience to arrange popular music for school bands. This quickly paid off, because soon numerous band leaders all over the country wanted copies of their arrangements, which led the artists to acquire licenses and copyrights. Read more...

Teaching methods

In addition to arrangements for bands, arrangements for choirs were added, as well as the "Pointer System for Organ", the best-selling teaching method for organ, which is also available for guitar and piano. In 1970 a new department called "learning unlimited" was created, which produced book/audio instructions for the first time. The "Guitar Method" became the first teaching method for guitar that included popular music in the learning process. This developed into the leading method. Hal Leonard is now represented in every area of printed music.

A world leading music publisher

Hal Leonard is now a world-leading music publisher with the most successful textbooks for virtually every musical instrument, as well as songbooks, real books, fake books and much more. The publishing house is also strongly represented in the technology sector with eBooks, Digital Sheet Music, Apps and more. It also invests in Noteflight and LLC, which allow musicians to edit, show, play and publish music. They get the opportunity to share their own work and creativity with a wide audience, just like the founders did.