Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
The Entertainer piano sheet music: the opening strain with letters
The Entertainer piano sheet music: the opening strain of Joplin’s rag with letter names and octaves, C major, 2/4. Play it, print it (A4, 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
The Entertainer on this page is the opening strain (pick-up and bars 1 to 8, right hand): 38 notes in 8 bars of 2/4, in C major, with a range of D4 to E6 (26 semitones). It begins on D4 and ends on D♯4. 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. It is a simplified melody: what is left out is listed under “What is on this page”.
The Entertainer at a glance
- Key
- C major (no sharps or flats)
- Time signature
- 2/4: two beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- D4 to E6, 26 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 38 notes, 8 bars after a pick-up
- First note
- D4 (scale degree 2)
- Last note
- D♯4 (scale degree ♭3)
- Notes outside the key signature
- D♯ and F♯ (accidentals in the tune)
- Piece
- “The Entertainer”, a piano rag by Scott Joplin, subtitled “A Rag Time Two Step”
- Published
- 1902 by John Stark & Son of Saint Louis; copyright registered 29 December 1902 (Wikipedia)
- Key of the rag
- primarily C major; the C section modulates to F major and the D section returns to C major (Wikipedia)
- Part on this page
- the pick-up and the first 8 bars of the A strain, right hand, top notes only (an excerpt, see below)
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 80; a slow practice speed chosen for this page; the edition marks it “Not fast”
- 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
- Harder: wider than a major sixth (26 semitones); wider than an octave; 5 notes outside the key signature; 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 right hand of the opening strain (the A section) only: the two-note pick-up and its first 8 bars. Where the right hand plays chords, only the top note is shown. The left hand, the repeat, the introduction and the other strains are not included.
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 = 80: a slow practice speed chosen for this page; the edition marks it “Not fast”.
The Entertainer
C major · 2/4 · melody with note names · the opening strain
Key C major (no sharps or flats) Range D4 to E6 Music Scott Joplin (copyright registered 29 December 1902)
Scale of C major C D E F G A B Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Mutopia Project, "The Entertainer", right hand (Chris Sawer) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2016/11/25-263), checked note by note against 1 other source. Simplified: the opening strain (pick-up and bars 1 to 8, right hand). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/the-entertainer-piano-notes
The Entertainer: name the notes
C major · 2/4 · 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: . The home note of the key is C.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a C, the home note of the key.
Melody: Mutopia Project, "The Entertainer", right hand (Chris Sawer) (Public Domain). Simplified: the opening strain (pick-up and bars 1 to 8, right hand). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/the-entertainer-piano-notes
The notes of The Entertainer, bar by bar
38 notes in 8 bars, after a pick-up, in C 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 |
|---|---|---|
| pick-up | D4 D♯4 | re ri |
| 1 | E4 C5 E4 C5 E4 C5 | mi do mi do mi do |
| 2 | C5 (held) C6 D6 D♯6 | do (held) do re ri |
| 3 | E6 C6 D6 E6 (held) B5 D6 | mi do re mi (held) ti re |
| 4 | C6 (held) D4 D♯4 | do (held) re ri |
| 5 | E4 C5 E4 C5 E4 C5 | mi do mi do mi do |
| 6 | C5 (held) A5 G5 | do (held) la sol |
| 7 | F♯5 A5 C6 E6 (held) D6 C6 A5 | fi la do mi (held) re do la |
| 8 | D6 (held) D4 D♯4 | re (held) re ri |
do re mi uses movable do: do is C.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 16 letter names, from D4 to E6, 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 37 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: E4 (6 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 1. Different pitches: 12, made from 8 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 24 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, "The Entertainer", right hand (Chris Sawer) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2016/11/25-263), cut to the opening strain (pick-up and bars 1 to 8, right hand). 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commons scan "Entertainer 2.jpg" (page 2 of the 1902 first edition, Library of Congress), first four bars of the strain read by eyeuploaded 2008-10-09, SHA-1 66719bb3d0; compared on the pick-up and bars 1 to 4 of this page | Public domain | 20 | 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.
The Entertainer: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of The Entertainer?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are D4 D♯4 E4 C5 E4 C5 E4 C5 C5 C6 D6 D♯6. Every note of the opening strain 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 The Entertainer in?
On this page it is in C major (no sharps or flats), in 2/4: two beats to the bar, each a quarter note. C major has no sharps or flats; the D♯ (pick-up, bars 2 and 8) and the F♯ (bar 7) are accidentals. Wikipedia says the rag is primarily in C major, with the C section in F major.
Why are there sharps, flats or naturals that are not in the key signature?
The key signature of C major gives no sharps or flats. In this tune the notes are written with an accidental sign (D♯ and F♯): the pick-up: D♯4; bar 2: D♯6; bar 4: D♯4; bar 7: F♯5; bar 8: D♯4. A sharp, flat or natural sign before a note applies to that note for the rest of the bar.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is D4 to E6, 26 semitones. The tune spans 16 letter names, from D4 to E6, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard.
Is this the whole of The Entertainer?
No. It is the first 8 bars of the A strain. According to Wikipedia the rag is built as Intro–AA–BB–A–CC–Intro2–DD, so this is a small part of it.
Is The Entertainer free to print and share?
“The Entertainer” was published in 1902, and Wikipedia says its copyright was registered on 29 December 1902. Works published in the United States in 1930 or earlier are in the public domain there (as of 2026), and the edition used here, the Mutopia Project typesetting of the 1902 first edition, is marked Public Domain by its typesetter. Copyright rules differ between countries; check yours if you plan to publish. The sheets are made by this site and may be printed and shared. Marvin Hamlisch’s 1973 arrangement for the film The Sting and other modern versions have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "The Entertainer", right hand (Chris Sawer), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: the public-domain scan read by eye (100% of its notes, the pick-up and bars 1 to 4). It agrees on every pitch. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
Who wrote The Entertainer?
Scott Joplin, in 1902. Wikipedia says it was first sold as sheet music by John Stark & Son of Saint Louis, Missouri, subtitled “A Rag Time Two Step”, and that the copyright was registered on 29 December 1902.
Why does everyone know The Entertainer?
Wikipedia says it returned to international prominence in the 1970s as the theme music of the 1973 film The Sting. Marvin Hamlisch’s adaptation reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 18 May 1974.
How do the first notes go?
The two-note pick-up is D4 and D♯4. The strain then goes E4 C5 E4 C5 E4 C5, holds that last C5 across the bar line, and in bar 2 leaps up an octave to C6, D6 and D♯6.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
The Entertainer in real music: the numbers
In C major the tune uses 8 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, 2 of them outside the key signature. It moves by step 15 times out of 37, and ends on degree ♭3.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | D4 (degree 2) | 2.0% start on degree 2 |
| Last note | D♯4 (degree ♭3) | 0.1% end on degree ♭3 |
| Range of the tune | 26 semitones (D4 to E6) | 100% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 0% 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 C major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in C major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 6.5% | 5 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 18.6% | 1 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 10.6% | 2 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 8.7% | 3 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 11.6% | 1 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 8.2% | 1 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for C 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 E6) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | wider than this range by 12 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 14 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 13 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | wider than this range by 10 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | wider than this range by 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 “The Entertainer”
Overview
"The Entertainer" is a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin.
It was sold first as sheet music by John Stark & Son of Saint Louis, Missouri, and in the 1910s as piano rolls that would play on player pianos. The first recording was by blues and ragtime musicians "the Blue Boys" in 1928, played on mandolin and guitar.
Music
"The Entertainer" is subtitled "A Rag Time Two Step", which was a form of dance popular until about 1911, and a style which was common among rags written at the time.
Its structure is: Intro–AA–BB–A–CC–Intro2–DD.
It is primarily set in the key of C major; however, for the C section (commonly referred to as the "Trio"), it modulates to F major, then shifts back to C major for the D section. The B section contains an indication that the melody is to be played an octave higher on the repeat.
In the June 7, 1903, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, contemporary composer Monroe H. Rosenfeld described "The Entertainer" as "the best and most euphonious" of Joplin's compositions to that point. "It is a jingling work of a very original character, embracing various strains of a retentive character which set the foot in spontaneous action and leave an indelible imprint on the tympanum". Joplin may have performed the piece at a fundraiser in Parsons, Kansas, on April 27, 1904.
Publication
The copyright on "The Entertainer" was registered December 29, 1902, along with two other Joplin rags, "A Breeze from Alabama" and "Elite Syncopations", all three of which were published by Stark. The centerpiece of the original cover art featured a minstrel show caricature of a black man in formal attire on a theater stage.
Source: Wikipedia, “The Entertainer (rag)” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-02.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "The Entertainer", right hand (Chris Sawer), Commons scan "Entertainer 2.jpg" (page 2 of the 1902 first edition, Library of Congress), first four bars of the strain read by eye, Wikipedia: The Entertainer (rag).