Christmas carol, sheet music with note names
Jingle Bells: notes, key and chords
Jingle Bells in G major, 4/4: all 51 notes with letter names, chords, range G4 to D5, public-domain words and a note-name worksheet. Free printable 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
This page is the chorus of "Jingle Bells", the part everyone knows ("Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way"): 51 notes in 8 bars of 4/4, in G major. It uses only 5 different notes, G A B C D, the first five notes of the G scale, so it fits one hand position on a piano. The melody is read from a public-domain MIDI file and checked against a CC0 one. The verse ("Dashing through the snow") is not on the staff; the FAQ says why.
Jingle Bells at a glance
- Key
- G major (one sharp)
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Range
- G4 to D5, 7 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 51 notes, 8 bars
- First note
- B4 (scale degree 3)
- Last note
- G4 (scale degree 1)
- Words and music
- James Lord Pierpont, published in 1857 as "The One Horse Open Sleigh"
- The chorus as sung today
- Wikipedia: the modern refrain is documented from 1898; the 1857 refrain was different
- Why it is free to use
- Pierpont died in 1893; the song was published in 1857 and the chorus tune is documented before 1900
- Level
- Easy: sixteenth notes. How the level is worked out
- Tempo
- about quarter note = 132 when played at normal speed
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).
Jingle Bells
G major · 4/4 · melody with note names
Key G major (one sharp: F♯) Range G4 to D5 Words James Lord Pierpont, 1857 Music James Lord Pierpont, 1857 (the chorus as sung today is documented from 1898)
Scale of G major G A B C D E F♯ I G: G B D IV C: C E G V D: D F♯ A
Melody: Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells refrain vector.mid" (Public domain; uploaded 2014-11-10, SHA-1 5b53ec6554), checked note by note against 1 other edition. Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/jingle-bells-notes
Jingle Bells: name the notes
G 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♯. The last note of a tune is usually the home note, G.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a G, the home note of the key.
Melody: Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells refrain vector.mid" (Public domain). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/jingle-bells-notes
The notes of Jingle Bells, bar by bar
51 notes in 8 bars, in G major. Letter names, the do-re-mi syllables (movable do: do is G) and the chord symbols of the setting, where there are any. “held” means a tied note that is not played again.
| Bar | Notes | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | B B B B B B | mi mi mi mi mi mi |
| 2 | B D G A B | mi sol do re mi |
| 3 | C C C C C B B B B | fa fa fa fa fa mi mi mi mi |
| 4 | B A A B A D | mi re re mi re sol |
| 5 | B B B B B B | mi mi mi mi mi mi |
| 6 | B D G A B | mi sol do re mi |
| 7 | C C C C C B B B B | fa fa fa fa fa mi mi mi mi |
| 8 | D D C A G | sol sol fa re do |
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 50 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: B4 (26 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 7. Different pitches: 5. Biggest leap: 7 semitones.
The words of Jingle Bells
The wording usually sung today
Verse 1
Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on bob tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight!
Chorus (sung after every verse)
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.
Verse 2
A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon, Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side,
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And then we got up sot.
Verse 3
A day or two ago,
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow,
And on my back I fell;
A gent was riding by
In a one-horse open sleigh,
He laughed as there I sprawling lie,
But quickly drove away. Ah!
Verse 4
Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young,
Take the girls tonight
and sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And snap! You'll take the lead.
Source: Wikipedia, "Jingle Bells", section Lyrics; words in the public domain (Pierpont died 1893); page text CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1355089641 of 2026-05-19. Wikipedia prints the words as they are usually sung, and in its section "Original lyrics" lists the lines of the 1857 first edition that differ (for example "O'er the hills we go" and "Oh what sport it is to ride"). The wording of verses and chorus below is the modern one.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells refrain vector.mid" (Public domain; uploaded 2014-11-10, SHA-1 5b53ec6554). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the editions below, which were typeset and encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s 51 notes that are found there, whatever key the other edition is in.
| Edition | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells.mid"uploaded 2020-01-20, SHA-1 e7123bf2e2; in another key, compared after moving it by 9 semitones | CC0 | 51 | 100% | 98% |
The rhythm column is lower than the pitch column 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.
Jingle Bells: questions people ask
What are the notes of the Jingle Bells chorus?
In G major the first line, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way", is B B B B B B B D G A B, and the second line, "Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh", is C C C C C B B B B B A A B A D. The whole chorus is B B B B B B B D G A B C C C C C B B B B B A A B A D B B B B B B B D G A B C C C C C B B B B D D C A G.
Is the Jingle Bells chorus really only five notes?
Yes. It uses 5 different notes, G, A, B, C and D, the first five notes of the G major scale (do re mi fa sol). Five neighbouring notes can be played without moving the hand, so the chorus suits a first piano or recorder lesson. The verse goes outside this group.
What key and time signature is Jingle Bells in?
The sheet uses G major (one sharp) and 4/4. The public-domain MIDI file it comes from is in G major; a second, CC0 file is in E major, a minor third lower, and the notes agree once it is moved. Wikipedia gives the refrain of the original 1857 song in A♭ major. G major is the number 3 key of 24 in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (8.1% of 1,462 songs) and number 2 in the Mutopia Project (14.5% of 1,974 pieces).
Is this the chorus Pierpont wrote?
Not exactly. Wikipedia says the original 1857 version had a substantially different refrain (a descending chord progression that it compares to Pachelbel's Canon), while the verses are mostly the same melody as today, with minor simplifications. The simpler refrain on this page "dates back at least 1898", when the oldest surviving recording was released (Edison Records). Both are older than 1930, so the tune is free to use either way.
Why is there no verse on this page?
The chorus is checked against a second edition; the verse could not be checked the same way. Only one open edition of the verse as it is sung today was found, and the other open verse on Wikimedia Commons, a transcription of the song in A♭, lines up with it for only about three notes in four (Wikipedia says the verses are mostly the same melody as in 1857, with some minor simplifications). Rather than print a tune that could not be confirmed, this page has the chorus only.
What did the Gemini 6 astronauts have to do with it?
Wikipedia has a section "First song in space": in December 1965 the crew of Gemini 6 broadcast the tune from orbit, Wally Schirra on a tiny harmonica and Tom Stafford on sleigh bells. The harmonica was given to the Smithsonian in 1967.
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Jingle Bells in real music: the numbers
In G major the tune uses 5 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 13 times out of 50, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | B4 (degree 3) | 32.5% start on degree 3 |
| Last note | G4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 7 semitones (G4 to D5) | 0% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 100% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the carol numbers are counted on the melody printed above.
How common G major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in G major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 8.1% | 3 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 14.5% | 2 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 9.8% | 3 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 8.9% | 2 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 8.7% | 3 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 6.7% | 4 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for G major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (G4 to D5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits as written |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits if moved down 2 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 8 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 10 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 14 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
- The carol'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.
History of "Jingle Bells"
Overview
"Jingle Bells" is an American song and one of the most commonly sung Christmas songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont. It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". It was published under the title "The One Horse Open Sleigh" in September 1857. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording—also from Edison Records—survives.
Composition
James Lord Pierpont originally copyrighted the song with the name "The One Horse Open Sleigh" on September 16, 1857. The songwriting credit given was "Song and Chorus written and composed by J. Pierpont." Possibly intended as a drinking song, it did not become a Christmas song until decades after it was first performed. Pierpont dedicated the song to John P. Ordway, Esq, an organizer of a troupe called "Ordway's Aeolians".
It is not known where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as "Jingle Bells". A plaque at 19 High Street in the center of Medford Square in Medford, Massachusetts, commemorates the "birthplace" of "Jingle Bells", and claims that Pierpont wrote the song there in 1850, at what was then the Simpson Tavern. Previous local history narratives claim the song was inspired by the town's popular sleigh races during the 19th century. Researcher Kyna Hamil proposes that the song was composed in Boston, before Pierpont moved to Savannah in the fall of 1857.
Melody
The original 1857 version of "Jingle Bells" featured a substantially different chorus. The progression of descending chords in the original refrain (A♭–E♭/G–Fm–C–D♭–A♭/E♭–E♭7–A♭; in Roman numeral analysis, I–V6–vi–V/vi–IV–I–V7–I) bears some resemblance to that of Pachelbel's Canon. The verses, on the other hand, have mostly the same melody (with some minor simplifications) in modern renditions as they did in 1857. The origin of the simpler, modern refrain is unknown, but it dates back at least 1898, when the oldest surviving phonograph recording of the song was released through Edison Records.
The "Jingle Bells" tune is used in French and German songs, although the lyrics are unrelated to the English lyrics. Both songs celebrate winter fun, as in the English version. The French song, titled "Vive le vent" ("Long Live the Wind"), was written by Francis Blanche and contains references to Father Time, Baby New Year, and New Year's Day. There are several German versions of "Jingle Bells", including Roy Black's "Ein kleiner weißer Schneemann".
Source: Wikipedia, “Jingle Bells” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-19.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells refrain vector.mid", Wikimedia Commons, "Jingle Bells.mid", Wikipedia: Jingle Bells.