Notalo › Easy piano songs with letters

Easy piano songs with letters

Each song below is a public-domain melody arranged for easy piano, with the letter under every note (right hand red, left hand blue), chord symbols, a bar-by-bar letter list, and a MIDI file. Free to print.

How to use these pages

Letter notes are the oldest shortcut in piano teaching: instead of memorizing where each note sits on the staff, you read the letter and find the key. On every song page the letters are written directly under the notes of a real score, so you learn the staff at the same time — after a few songs you will notice you are reading the notes and ignoring the letters. Each page also has the chord for every bar (for the left hand, or for a guitar), a short history of the tune, a phrase-by-phrase walkthrough, and a MIDI file you can slow down and play along with.

Where to start

If you have never played, begin with the five-finger tunes that never move the hand: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Ode to Joy and Chopsticks use only white keys and a handful of notes. Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday and Amazing Grace add one black key and a slightly wider range. Für Elise, Canon in D, Moonlight Sonata and Greensleeves are the famous classical openings, simplified so a beginner can play the part everyone recognizes.

How these were made

We write each arrangement ourselves — melody in the right hand, one simple chord per bar in the left — and engrave it with the free program LilyPond. That clean score then goes through Notalo, the same converter you can use on your own sheet music, which detects every notehead and writes the letters. Because the source is a clean render, the labels on these pages are checked note by note; they double as our accuracy test set. Only public-domain melodies are published here, and no lyrics.

All songs

• Jingle Bells — James Lord Pierpont, G major, 4/4
• Silent Night — Franz Xaver Gruber, C major, 6/8
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas — Traditional (West Country, England), G major, 3/4
• Deck the Halls — Traditional (Welsh melody “Nos Galan”), C major, 4/4
• Happy Birthday — Mildred J. Hill and Patty S. Hill (“Good Morning to All”), F major, 3/4
• Für Elise — Ludwig van Beethoven, A minor, 3/8
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star — Traditional (French, “Ah! vous dirai-je, maman”), C major, 4/4
• Canon in D — Johann Pachelbel, D major, 4/4
• Ode to Joy — Ludwig van Beethoven (Symphony No. 9), C major, 4/4
• Amazing Grace — Traditional (“New Britain”, Southern Harmony), G major, 3/4
• Moonlight Sonata (1st movement, easy) — Ludwig van Beethoven, A minor, 12/8
• Minuet in G — Christian Petzold (from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach), G major, 3/4
• Greensleeves — Traditional (English), A minor, 6/8
• Mary Had a Little Lamb — Traditional (rhyme published by Sarah Josepha Hale), C major, 4/4
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm — Traditional (American), C major, 4/4
• Chopsticks — Euphemia Allen (published as “The Celebrated Chop Waltz”), C major, 4/4
• Joy to the World — Lowell Mason (adapted from themes attributed to Handel), C major, 4/4
• The First Noel — Traditional (English), C major, 4/4
• Auld Lang Syne — Traditional (Scottish), words by Robert Burns, D major, 4/4
• O Holy Night — Adolphe Adam, C major, 4/4
• The Twelve Days of Christmas — Traditional (English), F major, 4/4
• Ave Maria (Schubert, easy) — Franz Schubert, C major, 4/4
• Eine kleine Nachtmusik (opening) — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, G major, 4/4
• God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen — Traditional (English), E minor, 4/4
• In the Hall of the Mountain King — Edvard Grieg, A minor, 4/4
• Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2 (easy) — Frédéric Chopin, C major, 12/8
• O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum) — Traditional (German), F major, 3/4
• The Star-Spangled Banner — John Stafford Smith, C major, 3/4
• Spring (The Four Seasons, opening) — Antonio Vivaldi, C major, 4/4
• Wedding March (Mendelssohn) — Felix Mendelssohn, C major, 4/4
• Hark! The Herald Angels Sing — Felix Mendelssohn, G major, 4/4
• London Bridge Is Falling Down — Traditional (English), C major, 4/4
• Yankee Doodle — Traditional (American), C major, 2/4
• Itsy Bitsy Spider — Traditional (American), C major, 6/8
• Scarborough Fair — Traditional (English), A minor (Dorian), 3/4
• The Blue Danube (waltz theme) — Johann Strauss II, D major, 3/4
• Symphony No. 5 (opening motif) — Ludwig van Beethoven, A minor, 2/4
• Prelude in C major, BWV 846 — Johann Sebastian Bach, C major, 4/4
• Morning Mood (Peer Gynt) — Edvard Grieg, C major, 6/8