Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Old MacDonald piano keys: letters, octaves and easy sheet music
Old MacDonald piano keys: the whole tune with letter names and octaves, in G major, 4/4, D4 to B4. 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
Old MacDonald Had a Farm on this page is the whole tune (one verse): 59 notes in 16 bars of 4/4, in G major, with a range of D4 to B4 (9 semitones). It begins on G4 and ends on G4. Below: the letter names with octave numbers, the notes on the staff, a version you can play, a note-name worksheet and the checks that were run.
Old MacDonald Had a Farm at a glance
- Key
- G major (one sharp)
- Time signature
- 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- D4 to B4, 9 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 59 notes, 16 bars
- First note
- G4 (scale degree 1)
- Last note
- G4 (scale degree 1)
- Song
- a traditional children’s song about a farmer and the animals he keeps; Roud Folk Song Index number 745 (Wikipedia)
- Earliest variant
- “In the Fields in Frost and Snow” from the 1706 opera The Kingdom of the Birds by Thomas d’Urfey, which has a different melody in a minor key (Wikipedia)
- Part on this page
- the whole tune, one verse
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 100; a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the sources give no tempo for the song
- Hands
- Right hand: the melody shown on the staff. The left hand is not shown on this page; play the tune with the right hand alone, or add any simple bass notes.
- Level
- Easy: a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
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 = 100: a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the sources give no tempo for the song.
Old MacDonald Had a Farm
G major · 4/4 · melody with note names
Key G major (one sharp: F♯) Range D4 to B4 Words traditional (a 1706 opera song by Thomas d’Urfey is its earliest known variant) Music traditional tune
Scale of G major G A B C D E F♯ Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Wikipedia in French, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 238744900 of 2026-08-18), checked note by note against 2 other sources. Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/old-macdonald-piano-notes
Old MacDonald Had a Farm: 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 home note of the key is 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: Wikipedia in French, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/old-macdonald-piano-notes
The notes of Old MacDonald Had a Farm, bar by bar
59 notes in 16 bars, in G 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.
| Bar | Right hand (melody) | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | G4 G4 G4 D4 | do do do sol |
| 2 | E4 E4 D4 | la la sol |
| 3 | B4 B4 A4 A4 | mi mi re re |
| 4 | G4 D4 | do sol |
| 5 | G4 G4 G4 D4 | do do do sol |
| 6 | E4 E4 D4 | la la sol |
| 7 | B4 B4 A4 A4 | mi mi re re |
| 8 | G4 D4 D4 | do sol sol |
| 9 | G4 G4 G4 D4 D4 | do do do sol sol |
| 10 | G4 G4 G4 | do do do |
| 11 | G4 G4 G4 G4 G4 G4 | do do do do do do |
| 12 | G4 G4 G4 G4 G4 G4 | do do do do do do |
| 13 | G4 G4 G4 D4 | do do do sol |
| 14 | E4 E4 D4 | la la sol |
| 15 | B4 B4 A4 A4 | mi mi re re |
| 16 | G4 | do |
do re mi uses movable do: do is G.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 6 letter names, from D4 to B4. A hand in one five-finger position covers five, so the hand has to shift position (or stretch) at least once; an octave is eight letter names. 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 58 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: G4 (30 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 18. Different pitches: 5. Biggest leap: 9 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 Wikipedia in French, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 238744900 of 2026-08-18). 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.
| Source | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm.mid"uploaded 2021-05-10, SHA-1 8a5b5d1d6f | CC0 | 59 | 100% | 98% |
| Wikimedia Commons, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm (pg).mid"uploaded 2023-01-26, SHA-1 d13a027e00; in another key, compared after moving it by 2 semitones | CC0 | 120 | 100% | 98% |
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.
Old MacDonald Had a Farm: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Old MacDonald Had a Farm?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are G4 G4 G4 D4 E4 E4 D4 B4 B4 A4 A4 G4. Every note of the whole tune 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 Old MacDonald Had a Farm in?
On this page it is in G major (one sharp), in 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note. G major has one sharp, F♯, but this tune never uses it: it stays on the white keys D, E, G, A and B. The two MIDI files used in the check are in G major and in A major, with the same tune.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is D4 to B4, 9 semitones; 0.82% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 98.8% a larger one. The tune spans 6 letter names, from D4 to B4. A hand in one five-finger position covers five, so the hand has to shift position (or stretch) at least once; an octave is eight letter names.
Is this the whole of Old MacDonald Had a Farm?
Yes, for the tune: the 16 bars are the whole melody of one verse. Each verse changes the animal and its sound but keeps the tune. The words are not printed on this page.
Is Old MacDonald Had a Farm free to print and share?
The song is a traditional one: Wikipedia traces the earliest variant to 1706 and says it was standardised in the twentieth century, and this page prints only the tune, which is traditional. The notes are read from the score printed in the French Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0), so the sheets carry that credit line and may be printed and shared under the same licence. Modern arrangements and recordings have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Wikipedia in French, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (score 1 in the article), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 2 other sources: MIDI file “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (100% of its notes); MIDI file “Old MacDonald Had a Farm (pg)” (100% of its notes). 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.
Who wrote Old MacDonald Had a Farm?
Nobody knows for sure. Wikipedia says the song is attributed to Thomas d’Urfey for an opera of 1706, and that it then lived as a folk song in Great Britain, Ireland and North America for hundreds of years, in many forms, before it was standardised in the twentieth century. The 1706 variant uses a different melody in a minor key.
Which piano keys play Old MacDonald?
The first twelve notes are G4 G4 G4 D4 E4 E4 D4 B4 B4 A4 A4 G4. The whole tune uses only five different keys, all white: D4, E4, G4, A4 and B4. It starts with G4 three times, then drops to D4 and goes up to E4.
Which words go with which notes?
In the score in the French Wikipedia article, “Old Mac-Do-nald had a farm” sits under the first seven notes, G4 G4 G4 D4 E4 E4 D4, and “EE-I-EE-I-O” under the next five, B4 B4 A4 A4 G4. The next line of the verse starts on the D4 that ends bar 4.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
Old MacDonald Had a Farm 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 12 times out of 58, 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 | G4 (degree 1) | 18.2% start on degree 1 |
| Last note | G4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 9 semitones (D4 to B4) | 1% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 99% 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 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 (D4 to B4) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved up 1 semitone |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits as written |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 5 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 7 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 11 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 “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”
Overview
"Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (sometimes shortened to Old MacDonald) is a traditional children's song and nursery rhyme about a farmer and the various animals he keeps. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. For example, if the verse uses a cow as the animal, then "moo" would be used as the animal's sound. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the animal sounds from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.
Thomas d'Urfey
In the Fields in Frost and Snows, Watching late and early; There I keep my Father's Cows, There I Milk 'em Yearly: Booing here, Booing there, Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo, We defy all Care and Strife, In a Charming Country-Life.
It is unknown whether this was the origin of the song, or if his version of the song was based on a traditional song already in existence. Like modern versions, the animals change from verse to verse and the rhythm is very similar, but it uses a different minor key melody.
Source: Wikipedia, “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-19.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Wikipedia in French, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (score 1 in the article), Wikimedia Commons, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm.mid", Wikimedia Commons, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm (pg).mid", Wikipedia: Old MacDonald Had a Farm.