Easy Songs With Letter Notes: 20 to Play in Your Browser

Most "easy songs" lists sort by how famous a song is. This one sorts by what actually makes a melody easy to pick out from letter notes: how many different pitches it uses, how far it jumps, and whether it needs a black key. Every song links straight to a browser demo where each click plays the next note, so you can hear how it goes before you try it on a piano or kalimba.

How to read letter notes

Letter notes are the plain names of the notes: C D E F G A B, which on a piano are the white keys going up from C. A sharp (#) is the black key just above a letter, so D# sits between D and E.

Letters don't tell you the octave. When it matters, this page uses scientific pitch notation, where C4 is middle C, the C nearest the middle of a piano keyboard, and the number goes up by one at each C (Wikipedia). A range of "C4–G4" means the whole song fits between middle C and the G above it.

On the individual song pages you'll also see number notes, the system most kalimba tabs use: 1 to 7 stand for do re mi fa sol la ti, a dot under a number drops it an octave and a dot over it raises it an octave (Wikipedia). With C as 1, Twinkle starts 1 1 5 5 6 6 5.

All 20 songs, easiest first

Ranked by the number of different pitches, then by length. "Starts with" is the first eight notes. Click a song to play it in your browser.

Six of them have their own page with every line written out in letters and kalimba numbers: Twinkle, Happy Birthday, Ode to Joy, Jingle Bells, Für Elise and Amazing Grace.

Where to start

Three to five pitches, one hand position. Hot Cross Buns (E D C), Mary Had a Little Lamb (C D E G) and the Jingle Bells chorus (C D E F G) all stay inside five neighbouring white keys, C up to G. On a piano, rest your right thumb on middle C and give each finger one key: thumb C, then D, E, F, G. You never have to move your hand, so all your attention goes to getting the notes in order.

Six pitches, a bit of reach. Twinkle, London Bridge and Oh! Susanna add the A above G, which means stretching your little finger one key or shifting your hand once. Row, Row, Row Your Boat climbs a full octave from C to C at "merrily, merrily", the first real stretch on this list.

Songs that go below middle C. Happy Birthday and Amazing Grace start on the G under middle C, and Old MacDonald drops to it in its first line. On a piano that's a hand position lower than you might expect; on the browser demo it doesn't matter, the next click is always the next note.

Black keys. Only five of the 20 need a sharp or flat. Für Elise is the famous one: its opening rocks between E and D# before anything else happens. Minuet in G and Eine kleine Nachtmusik need F#, and Beethoven's Fifth needs E♭ in its very first phrase.

Rhythm is the real difficulty

Letter notes tell you which note comes next but not how long it lasts, and that's where most "easy" songs get hard.

Count the repeated notes. Jingle Bells is one of the easiest songs to read, five pitches and no stretches, but 29 of its 50 steps are the same note played again. "Jingle bells, jingle bells" is E E E, E E E; the song lives entirely in the timing. Twinkle has 18 repeats out of 41 steps and is built in pairs: C C, G G, A A, then a longer G.

At the other end, Für Elise and Bach's Prelude in C have no repeated notes at all. They're harder to read but the rhythm is steady, an even flow of notes, so once you know the order they almost play themselves.

A useful habit: sing or hum the song while you play it. You already know the rhythm of Happy Birthday; the letters only fill in the pitches.

Playing these on a kalimba

A kalimba tuned to C major has the white-key notes only, usually laid out from the centre outwards, with the lowest note in the middle. That makes the 15 songs marked "none" under Black keys the ones to start with. Number notes are often easier than letters on a kalimba, since many kalimbas come with numbers marked on the tines.

Range matters on a kalimba more than on a piano. Songs that dip below middle C, like Amazing Grace and Happy Birthday, need the lower tines; check that your instrument goes down to the G below middle C before you start.

Play every song in your browser

Each song in the table opens the echoPi web demo with that tune loaded. Every click (or push of the slider on screen) plays the next note, and you decide when, so the rhythm is yours. You can switch the sound from piano to guitar, music box or harp, or to the silly ones: a frog, a cat, a duck.

The demo is a sound preview for echoPi, an EDC fidget slider in development where each click can play a note. It plays the song; it can't pass on the feel of a real click through a screen. If you'd like to hear when the hardware is ready, join the list.

Where these songs come from

All 20 are old melodies. The newest tune on the list is the one Happy Birthday is sung to, from 1893; the rest run from the 16th-century Greensleeves through Bach's Prelude in C (1722) to Brahms' Lullaby (1868). Music generally enters the public domain some decades after its creator dies, though the rules differ by country, and a modern arrangement or recording can carry its own rights even when the melody doesn't (Wikipedia).

For more ways to make music while you fidget, see musical fidgets and fidget sliders with sound.