Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Canon in D piano notes: the melody with letters and the bass line
Canon in D piano notes: the first melody with letter names and octaves, in D major, 4/4, B3 to A5. Play it and print it (A4 and Letter PDF).
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
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Quick answer
Canon in D on this page is the first 8 bars of the melody (first violin): 48 notes in 8 bars of 4/4, in D major, with a range of B3 to A5 (22 semitones). It begins on F♯5 and ends on C♯5. Below: the letter names with octave numbers and the left hand, the notes on the staff, a version you can play, a note-name worksheet and the checks that were run. It is a simplified melody: what is left out is listed under “What is on this page”.
Canon in D at a glance
- Key
- D major (two sharps)
- Time signature
- 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- B3 to A5, 22 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 48 notes, 8 bars
- First note
- F♯5 (scale degree 3)
- Last note
- C♯5 (scale degree 7)
- Piece
- Canon in D (Pachelbel’s Canon, P 37) for three violins and basso continuo, paired with a gigue; both are in D major
- Composer
- Johann Pachelbel (1653 to 1706)
- Date
- not known: suggested dates range from 1680 to 1706, and the oldest surviving manuscript copy dates from 1838 to 1842
- Form
- a true canon at the unison in three parts, over a ground bass that repeats throughout
- Part on this page
- the first violin’s first 8 bars, with the ground bass in the left-hand column
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 60; a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the sources give no tempo
- Hands
- Right hand: the melody shown on the staff. Left hand: the bass notes of each bar, from the same edition, are in the table below.
- Level
- Harder: wider than a major sixth (22 semitones); wider than an octave; sixteenth notes; a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
What is on this page
This is an excerpt. The staff shows the first violin’s first 8 bars, which are bars 3 to 10 of the Canon because the first violin enters in bar 3: four bars of quarter notes, then four bars of eighth notes. The Canon is a round for three violins over a bass line, and the other two violins play the same melody later; none of that is on the staff. The left-hand column gives the bass notes (the ground bass of eight notes that repeats all through the piece).
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording). Normal speed is quarter note = 60: a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the sources give no tempo.
Canon in D
D major · 4/4 · melody with note names · the first melody
Key D major (two sharps: F♯, C♯) Range B3 to A5 Music Johann Pachelbel (1653 to 1706); date of composition unknown
Scale of D major D E F♯ G A B C♯ Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Canon per 3 Violini e Basso", violin I (Michael Fischer v. Mollard) (CC BY 4.0; Mutopia-2015/09/02-2047), checked note by note against 2 other sources. Simplified: the first 8 bars of the melody (first violin). Free to print and share; please keep this credit line. musictheoryprint.com/charts/canon-in-d-piano-notes
Canon in D: name the notes
D major · 4/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are sharp: F♯, C♯. The home note of the key is D.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a D, the home note of the key.
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Canon per 3 Violini e Basso", violin I (Michael Fischer v. Mollard) (CC BY 4.0). Simplified: the first 8 bars of the melody (first violin). Free to print and share; please keep this credit line. musictheoryprint.com/charts/canon-in-d-piano-notes
The notes of Canon in D, bar by bar
48 notes in 8 bars, in D major. Each note is a letter and an octave number: C4 is middle C, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard, and the numbers go up by one at every C. The ♯ and ♭ mean the black key above or below the letter. “held” means a tied note that is not played again; “rest” is silence. The left-hand column gives the bass notes of each bar, read from the same edition; “held” there means a bass note that is still sounding from the bar before.
| Bar | Right hand (melody) | Left hand (bass) | do re mi |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | F♯5 E5 D5 C♯5 | D3 A2 B2 F♯2 | mi re do ti |
| 2 | B4 A4 B4 C♯5 | G2 D2 G2 A2 | la sol la ti |
| 3 | D5 C♯5 B4 A4 | D3 A2 B2 F♯2 | do ti la sol |
| 4 | G4 F♯4 G4 E4 | G2 D2 G2 A2 | fa mi fa re |
| 5 | D4 F♯4 A4 G4 F♯4 D4 F♯4 E4 | D3 A2 B2 F♯2 | do mi sol fa mi do mi re |
| 6 | D4 B3 D4 A4 G4 B4 A4 G4 | G2 D2 G2 A2 | do la do sol fa la sol fa |
| 7 | F♯4 D4 E4 C♯5 D5 F♯5 A5 A4 | D3 A2 B2 F♯2 | mi do re ti do mi sol sol |
| 8 | B4 G4 A4 F♯4 D4 D5 D5 C♯5 | G2 D2 G2 A2 | la fa sol mi do do do ti |
do re mi uses movable do: do is D.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 14 letter names, from B3 to A5, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard. Try the notes on the virtual piano or press a note on the staff above to hear it.
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 47 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: A4 (7 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 12, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 12 semitones.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "Canon per 3 Violini e Basso", violin I (Michael Fischer v. Mollard) (CC BY 4.0; Mutopia-2015/09/02-2047), cut to the first 8 bars of the melody (first violin). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the sources below, which were typeset or encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s notes that are found there, whatever key the other source is in; where a source covers only the start of the tune, only that part is compared (it is named in the table).
| Source | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia, "Pachelbel's Canon" (score 1 in the article)revision 1362424993 of 2026-07-03 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 48 | 100% | 100% |
| Wikimedia Commons, "Pachelbel Canon bass line (quarter notes).mid"uploaded 2012-08-21, SHA-1 35d021dc06; an octave lower than this page; compared on bars 1 to 2 of this page | Public domain | 17 | 100% | 100% |
The second column is lower than the first because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names. A MIDI file of a whole piano piece does not say which notes are the melody, so the program takes the highest note at each moment; a melody note that sits under a higher accompaniment note can be missed, and that is the usual reason for a “no matching note” above.
Canon in D: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Canon in D?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are F♯5 E5 D5 C♯5 B4 A4 B4 C♯5 D5 C♯5 B4 A4. Every note of the first melody is in the table above, one bar per row (middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard; the next C up is C5).
What key and time signature is Canon in D in?
On this page it is in D major (two sharps), in 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note. Both movements of the work, the canon and the gigue, are in D major.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is B3 to A5, 22 semitones. The tune spans 14 letter names, from B3 to A5, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard.
Is this the whole of Canon in D?
No. It is the first 8 bars of the melody. Wikipedia counts 28 statements of the eight-note ground bass in the whole piece, and the melody changes into faster notes after the part shown.
Is Canon in D free to print and share?
Pachelbel died in 1706, so the music is free to use. The edition used here is the Mutopia Project typesetting of the Canon for three violins and bass by Michael Fischer v. Mollard, licensed CC BY 4.0 (credit required, and this page gives it). The sheets are made by this site and may be printed and shared with that credit. Modern arrangements and recordings have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "Canon per 3 Violini e Basso", violin I (Michael Fischer v. Mollard), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 2 other sources: Wikipedia's score (100% of its notes); MIDI file “Pachelbel Canon bass line (quarter notes)” (100% of its notes, bars 1 to 2). 2 of the 2 agree with this page on every pitch. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
Why does Canon in D sound so repetitive?
Because the bass repeats. Under the three violins the bass plays the same eight notes, D A B F♯ G D G A, over and over; Wikipedia counts 28 statements of this ground bass in the piece. The violins change the notes they play over it, bar after bar, from quarter notes to eighth notes to sixteenth notes and so on.
Which bars of the Canon are on this page?
Bars 3 to 10 of the piece, which are the first violin’s first eight bars. Wikipedia’s analysis lists bars 3 to 6 as quarter notes and bars 7 to 10 as eighth notes, which is what the table shows. Bars 1 and 2 are only the bass line, because the violin enters in bar 3.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
Canon in D in real music: the numbers
In D major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 28 times out of 47, and ends on degree 7.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | F♯5 (degree 3) | 32.5% start on degree 3 |
| Last note | C♯5 (degree 7) | 0.7% end on degree 7 |
| Range of the tune | 22 semitones (B3 to A5) | 97% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 2% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the numbers for this tune are counted on the melody printed above.
How common D major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in D major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 6.8% | 4 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 9.9% | 3 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 11.4% | 1 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 11.0% | 1 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 11.0% | 2 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 6.0% | 7 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for D major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (B3 to A5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | wider than this range by 8 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 10 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 9 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | wider than this range by 6 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | wider than this range by 7 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- This tune's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
About “Canon in D”
Overview
Pachelbel's Canon (also known as Canon in D, P 37) is an accompanied canon by German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706). The canon was originally scored for three violins and basso continuo and paired with a gigue, known as Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo. Both movements are in the key of D major. The piece is constructed as a true canon at the unison in three parts, with a fourth part as a ground bass throughout. Neither the date nor the circumstances of its composition are known (suggested dates range from 1680 to 1706), and the oldest surviving manuscript copy of the piece dates from 1838 to 1842.
Creation
In his lifetime, Pachelbel was renowned for his organ and other keyboard music, whereas today he is also recognized as an important composer of church and chamber music. Little of his chamber music survives, however. Only Musikalische Ergötzung—a collection of partitas published during Pachelbel's lifetime—is known, apart from a few isolated pieces in manuscripts. The Canon and Gigue in D major is one such piece. A single 19th-century manuscript copy of them survives, Mus.ms. 16481/8 in the Berlin State Library. It contains two more chamber suites. Another copy, previously in Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, is now lost.
Analysis
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The harmonic progression follows a sequential pattern known as the Romanesca, which according to Robert Gjerdingen was a common schema during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In Germany, Italy and France of the 17th century, some pieces built on an ostinato bass were called chaconnes or passacaglias; such works sometimes incorporate some form of variation in the upper voices. While some writers consider each of the 28 statements of the ground bass a separate variation, one scholar finds that Pachelbel's canon is constructed of just 12 variations, mostly four bars in length, and describes them as follows:
Source: Wikipedia, “Pachelbel's Canon” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-07-03.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "Canon per 3 Violini e Basso", violin I (Michael Fischer v. Mollard), Wikipedia, "Pachelbel's Canon" (score 1 in the article), Wikimedia Commons, "Pachelbel Canon bass line (quarter notes).mid".