Happy Birthday Notes: Letters, Piano & Kalimba Numbers

Everyone can sing Happy Birthday, so you already know the rhythm; you just don't know where the notes sit. It's less beginner-friendly than it looks: it starts below middle C, climbs a full octave in line 3, and has a lopsided rhythm on every "Hap-py". Here are the 25 notes, the words matched to them, and how to handle the two tricky spots.

To hear it before you play, try Happy Birthday in your browser. It's the web sound demo for echoPi, a fidget slider in development: every click or push plays the next note and you set the timing, so you can practise the rhythm on its own.

Happy Birthday notes in letters and kalimba numbers

How to read the table: letter names don't include the octave. The number column takes C as 1; a dot under a number means the octave below, a dot over it the octave above. The range is G3 to G4, from the G below middle C to the G above it, so most of this song's G, A and B are the low ones, marked 5̣, 6̣ and 7̣.

In line 3 the letters say G G G but the numbers say 5̣ 5̣ 5: the third G is an octave higher. Letters alone hide the hardest moment in the song.

The words, note by note

• Line 1: Hap-py birth-day to you → G G A G C B
• Line 2: Hap-py birth-day to you → G G A G D C
• Line 3: Hap-py birth-day dear (name) → G G G E C B A
• Line 4: Hap-py birth-day to you → F F E C D C

Line 3 gives the name two notes, B and A, which is why it has seven notes to the others' six. A two-syllable name ("Ma-ya") takes one each; a one-syllable name stretches across both; a longer name squeezes extra syllables onto the B.

The rhythm: a waltz with a hiccup

Happy Birthday is in three: count "1 2 3, 1 2 3". Each line has the same shape:

1. "Hap-py" is a pick-up before the first strong beat, and it's uneven: "Hap" long, "py" very short, a bounce into the next note. Playing the two Gs evenly is the usual reason it sounds wrong.
2. "birth-day to" take one beat each, with "birth" on the strong beat.
3. "you" is held for two beats before the next "Hap-py".

In line 3, "dear" and the name take the place of "to you"; leaning on the name is fine.

In the browser demo, nothing plays until you click: click the first G, wait, then click the second almost immediately. Get that pair right and the line follows.

The jump in line 3

Every other move in Happy Birthday is a fifth or smaller. Line 3 opens with two low Gs, then leaps a full octave to the high G on "birth-": eight white keys up on a piano.

If that note trips you up, it isn't just you. In a folder labelled "Mildred Hill" in the University of Louisville's music library, its director found a small sketchbook with what UofL News calls the only known handwritten manuscript of the song. That version, the article says, "avoids that almost-always butchered octave jump toward the end" (UofL News). The version everyone sings kept the jump anyway.

After the high G, line 3 walks straight back down, E C B A, landing on the A just above where it started.

How to play Happy Birthday on the piano

Because the song spans an octave and starts below middle C, the easiest beginner layout splits it between two hands. Neither hand moves.

Left hand: fingers on the three white keys just below middle C, which are G, A and B. Finger 3 on G, 2 on A, thumb on B.

Right hand: thumb on middle C, then one finger per white key: 2 on D, 3 on E, 4 on F, 5 on the G above.

The line 3 jump becomes a handover: left hand plays the low Gs, right little finger the high G. Line 4, the only line with F, is right hand only.

One hand only? Start with the thumb on the low G, which covers lines 1 and 2; line 3 then needs a shift up and back. The two-hand split keeps the rhythm steadier.

How to play Happy Birthday on a kalimba

On the common kalimba layout, the lowest note is the long centre tine and the scale climbs outwards, alternating right and left (Wikipedia).

The question is range: the song needs 5̣, 6̣ and 7̣, the three notes below 1. Check your lowest tine:

• If it's lower than 1 (marked with a dot underneath), the table works as written.
• If your lowest tine is 1, the low notes aren't there. Play the whole song one octave higher: every number moves up one octave, so 5̣ becomes 5, 1 becomes a 1 with a dot over it, and the high 5 in line 3 becomes a 5 with a dot over it. Same tune, higher, but your kalimba must reach that dotted 5.

Either way, the line 3 leap feels different on a kalimba. Because the scale alternates sides, notes an octave apart (seven steps) end up on opposite sides of the centre, so the jump becomes a change of thumbs rather than a long reach.

Where the song comes from

The tune started as a classroom greeting. Sisters Mildred J. Hill, a composer, and Patty Hill, a kindergarten educator in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote "Good Morning to All"; Mildred wrote the melody and Patty the words (U.S. Copyright Office). It opens their 80-song collection Song Stories for the Kindergarten, first published in 1893 with Patty Smith Hill credited for the words (IMSLP).

The birthday words came later. The tune and the "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics first appeared together in print in 1912 (Wikipedia), and by 1935 it was well known as the standard birthday song, according to the Copyright Office's account.

The copyright story, briefly

• 1935: the Clayton F. Summy Company, publisher of the original songbook, published and copyrighted an arrangement pairing the melody with the birthday lyrics.
• 1988: Warner/Chappell Music bought the successor to the Summy company. Licensing the song was estimated to bring in more than $2 million a year (U.S. Copyright Office, 2010).
• September 22, 2015: in Marya v. Warner/Chappell Music, Judge George H. King held that the Hill sisters had given Summy rights to the melody and piano arrangements, not the lyrics, so there was no valid copyright in the lyrics (Berkeley Technology Law Journal).
• June 30, 2016: the final settlement was approved and the court declared the song to be in the public domain; in the European Union, copyright expired on January 1, 2017 (Wikipedia).

Versions you'll hear

• The extra round. In parts of the US and Canada, especially at young children's birthdays, it's not unusual for singers to carry straight on with "How old are you now?" to the same tune.
• A disputed origin. Writer Kembrew McLeod has argued the Hills borrowed the tune and idea from earlier 19th-century greeting songs; law professor Robert Brauneis disputes this, noting those songs had quite different melodies (Wikipedia).

Play it now

Get the "Hap-py" bounce and the line 3 jump right and the rest plays itself. Practise both in the echoPi browser demo, one click per note. For a gentler start with no octave jump, the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star notes stay within six neighbouring white keys.