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Easy piano songs, free to print

Easy piano songs: free sheet music with letter names

Easy piano sheet music for 10 songs, Für Elise to Happy Birthday, with letter names and octaves. Free to print, A4 and Letter PDF.

One page: every song with its key, time signature, range, level and first notes.

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Free to print and share. No sign-up, no e-mail, no watermark. A4 for most of the world, Letter for the US and Canada; both are black and white, with the fonts embedded.

Quick answer

10 well-known tunes that are free to print, each with every note named in letters and with its octave number, the tune on the staff, a version you can play, a note-name worksheet and the checks that were run. The narrowest tune is Moonlight Sonata (7 semitones, E4 to B4); the widest is Canon in D (22 semitones, B3 to A5). 4 of the tunes are shortened or simplified to the part people look for: Für Elise, Canon in D, Moonlight Sonata and Clair de Lune. Each page says what is left out.

Easy piano songs: key, range and level

10 free tunes with letter names · musictheoryprint.com

SongKeyTimeRangeLevelFirst notesMusic
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little StarAh! vous dirai-je, maman C major 4/4 C4 to A4 9 st Easy C4 C4 G4 G4 A4 A4 G4 French melody, first published 1761
Happy Birthday to YouGood Morning to All G major 3/4pick-up D4 to D5 12 st Medium D4 D4 E4 D4 G4 F♯4 D4 “Good Morning to All”, 1893
Ode to JoyBeethoven, Symphony No. 9 G major 4/4 D4 to D5 12 st Medium B4 B4 C5 D5 D5 C5 B4 Ludwig van Beethoven, 1822 to 1824
Amazing Gracetune New Britain G major 3/4pick-up D4 to D5 12 st Easy D4 G4 B4 G4 B4 A4 G4 “New Britain”, from American tune books of the 1820s and 1830s
Brahms' LullabyWiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4 E♭ major 3/4pick-up E♭4 to E♭5 12 st Medium G4 G4 B♭4 G4 G4 B♭4 G4 Johannes Brahms, 1868
Minuet in GBWV Anh. 114 G major 3/4 D4 to B5 21 st Harder D5 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 G4 Christian Petzold, 1720 (attributed to J. S. Bach)
Für EliseBagatelle No. 25 in A minor, WoO 59 A minor 3/8pick-up C4 to E5 16 st Harder E5 D♯5 E5 D♯5 E5 B4 D5 Ludwig van Beethoven, 1810 (published 1867)*
Canon in DPachelbel's Canon D major 4/4 B3 to A5 22 st Harder F♯5 E5 D5 C♯5 B4 A4 B4 Johann Pachelbel (1653 to 1706)*
Moonlight SonataPiano Sonata No. 14, first movement C♯ minor 2/2pick-up E4 to B4 7 st Medium G♯4 G♯4 G♯4 G♯4 G♯4 G♯4 A4 Ludwig van Beethoven, 1801*
Clair de LuneSuite bergamasque, 3rd movement D♭ major 9/8 C4 to A♭5 20 st Medium A♭5 F5 F5 E♭5 F5 E♭5 E♭5 Claude Debussy, published 1905*

* Shortened: the page for that song shows only the part named there (an opening, a theme or an excerpt). st = semitones from the lowest to the highest note. Level: Easy = 0 or 1, Medium = 2 or 3, Harder = 4 or 5 of: range over 9 semitones; range over an octave; notes outside the key signature; sixteenth notes; a leap of 8 semitones or more. Notes are given in scientific pitch notation (middle C = C4).

Keys, ranges and notes are computed from the melody of each song, read from the editions named on the song’s own page (Mutopia Project, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/easy-piano-songs

The songs, easiest first

Sorted by level and then by range. Each song has a page with the notes on the staff, a letter and octave number for every note, a play-along, a worksheet, printable PDFs and the checks that were run.

How high and low each tune goes

Each bar runs from the lowest to the highest note of the tune as printed on its page. The lines mark C4 (middle C), E4, G4, C5, E5, G5 and B5. If your voice or instrument has a smaller range, move the whole tune up or down until the bar fits.

Which keys the songs are in

KeySongsWhichShare of art songsShare of Mutopia pieces
G major4Happy Birthday to You, Ode to Joy, Amazing Grace, Minuet in G8.1%14.5%
A minor1Für Elise6.1%6.1%
C major1Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star6.5%18.6%
C♯ minor1Moonlight Sonata1.0%0.3%
D major1Canon in D6.8%9.9%
D♭ major1Clair de Lune3.4%0.8%
E♭ major1Brahms' Lullaby8.7%4.0%

How the level of a song is worked out

A program counts how many of these five things are true of the tune, using the notes printed on the song’s page: 5 possible points.

  1. Wider than a major sixth: the lowest and highest notes are more than 9 semitones apart.
  2. Wider than an octave: more than 12 semitones apart.
  3. Notes outside the key signature: sharps, flats or naturals that the key signature does not give.
  4. Sixteenth notes (or shorter) in the tune.
  5. A leap of a minor sixth (8 semitones) or more between two neighbouring notes.

Easy is 0 or 1 point, Medium 2 or 3, Harder 4 or 5. It measures the notes only (range, accidentals, note lengths, leaps), not hand position, fingering or the difficulty of an accompaniment, so a teacher’s judgement comes first. Here 2 songs are Easy, 5 Medium and 3 Harder.

Where the notes come from

The melody of every song is read by a program from a machine-readable edition that may be used freely, never typed in or remembered: the Mutopia Project (typeset editions, public domain or with a credit licence) or the score printed in a Wikipedia article. A second program then compares the melody with other sources, note by note: other typesettings of the same music, the scores in Wikipedia articles and public-domain, CC0 or credit-licence MIDI files on Wikimedia Commons. The result is on each song’s page, including the places where sources disagree.

Easy piano songs: questions people ask

What are the easiest songs to play on the piano?

By the rule explained on this page (which counts only the notes: range, notes outside the key, short notes and leaps), Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Amazing Grace are the easiest here (at most one of five difficulty points). Happy Birthday to You, Ode to Joy, Brahms' Lullaby, Moonlight Sonata and Clair de Lune are medium and Minuet in G, Für Elise and Canon in D are harder. The rule does not measure hand position, fingering or the difficulty of the original accompaniment, so a teacher’s judgement comes first. The Moonlight Sonata and Clair de Lune pages show only a melody line, so their level says nothing about the full pieces.

How do I read the letter names and octave numbers?

A letter is the name of the note, A to G. The number after it says which octave: C4 is middle C, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard, and C5 is the next C up. A ♯ after the letter means the black key above, and a ♭ the black key below. On every page the staff shows each note with its letter underneath, and the table gives the letter and octave of every note, bar by bar.

Why are these songs free to print?

Each tune is old enough: Pachelbel’s Canon was written before 1706 and Debussy’s Clair de lune, the newest, was published in 1905. The page for each song says exactly where its tune, words and edition come from. Modern arrangements, recordings and newer sheet music of the same songs are separate works, so these pages print only the tune.

Why are some of the songs shortened?

Because most people search for one famous part. Für Elise, Canon in D, Moonlight Sonata and Clair de Lune are shown as the opening, a theme or an excerpt, and each page lists what is left out. A shortened version is a way to read the letter names of the famous bars, not a replacement for the score of the whole piece.

How were the notes checked?

Every melody is read by a program from one open edition (the Mutopia Project, or the score printed in a Wikipedia article), never typed in or remembered. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with other sources: other typesettings of the same music, the scores in Wikipedia articles and MIDI files on Wikimedia Commons. The result, including the places where a source disagrees, is printed on each song’s page.

Can I print and share these sheets?

Yes, with no sign-up. Each song page has A4 and US Letter PDFs: the melody with note names and a worksheet with the names left blank. 4 of the tunes come from editions with a credit requirement (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Happy Birthday to You, Canon in D and Moonlight Sonata): their pages print the credit line on the sheet, so keep it when you share.

musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share

Easy piano songs and real music: the numbers

The ten tunes are in 7 keys: G major (4); A minor (1); C major (1); C♯ minor (1); D major (1); D♭ major (1); E♭ major (1).

The keys of these songs against real music

KeySongs hereShare of OpenScore Lieder songsShare of Mutopia pieces
G major48.1%14.5%
A minor16.1%6.1%
C major16.5%18.6%
C♯ minor11.0%0.3%
D major16.8%9.9%
D♭ major13.4%0.8%
E♭ major18.7%4.0%

Shares are counts of key signatures (with major or minor estimated) in the collections the site has measured.

How wide each tune is

SongRangeSemitonesArt-song vocal lines that are narrower
Moonlight SonataE4 to B470%
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little StarC4 to A491%
Happy Birthday to YouD4 to D5123%
Ode to JoyD4 to D5123%
Amazing GraceD4 to D5123%
Brahms' LullabyE♭4 to E♭5123%
Für EliseC4 to E51639%
Clair de LuneC4 to A♭52087%
Minuet in GD4 to B52193%
Canon in DB3 to A52297%

Range = lowest to highest note of the tune as printed on the page. The last column is the share of the 1,458 first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus whose lowest-to-highest range is smaller.

Method

  • Keys and ranges come from the melodies decoded for each song page (the notes are read from the editions named there).
  • Art-song and Mutopia numbers come from the published statistics files of this site.

Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).

Practise it

Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.

Sources: The Mutopia Project, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia.