When the Saints Go Marching In chords: letters and easy piano notes

When the Saints Go Marching In: questions people ask

What are the letter notes of When the Saints Go Marching In?

The first notes, with their octave numbers, are C4 E4 F4 G4 C4 E4 F4 G4 C4 E4 F4 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 When the Saints Go Marching In 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, so every note is a white key. The Commons MIDI file used in the check is in G major, with the same tune a fifth higher.

Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?

The range is C4 to G4, 7 semitones; 0.07% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 99.7% a larger one. The whole tune stays inside 5 letter names, C4 to G4, which is what one hand covers in a five-finger position (five neighbouring white keys), so the hand does not have to move.

Is this the whole of When the Saints Go Marching In?

Yes, for the tune: the three-note pick-up and the 15 bars are the whole melody of one verse, and every verse uses the same tune again. The words are not printed on this page.

Is When the Saints Go Marching In free to print and share?

Wikipedia calls the song a traditional African-American spiritual whose origins are unclear, and says the first known recording was made in 1923. It also says that a number of composers claimed copyright in it in later years. This page prints only the bare traditional melody, read from the score printed in the German Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0), and none of those later arrangements; it does not print the 1896 composition “When the Saints Are Marching In”, which Wikipedia says is a different piece. The sheets carry the credit line of the score and may be printed and shared under the same licence. This is not legal advice, and copyright rules differ between countries.

How do I know the notes are right?

The melody is read by a program from Wikipedia in German, "When the Saints Go Marching In" (the ABC score in the article), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: MIDI file “When The Saints” (97% of its notes). It differs in places. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.

Where are the chords of When the Saints Go Marching In?

This page prints the melody only. The sources it reads, a score of the melody and a MIDI file of the melody, contain no chords, so no chord row or chord names are given; any chord chart you use is an accompaniment to these notes.

Is it Come or Go Marching In?

Wikipedia says the song is often mistakenly called “When the Saints Come Marching In”. It also says the title on the label of the first known recording, from 1923, was “When All the Saints Come Marching In”, although the group sings the modern words beginning “When the saints go marching in”.

Why does the Commons MIDI file differ in one note?

In bar 8, the line “Oh Lord I want to be in that number”, the score in the Wikipedia article has the notes E, E, D on the way down to the long C, and the MIDI file has D where the score has the second E. The other 30 of this page’s 31 notes agree, and the check table lists the difference. This page follows the score.

Why does the tune start with only three notes?

The score in the Wikipedia article opens with an eighth-note rest and the three notes C, E and F, which the lyric lines of the score set to the words “Oh when the”; the long G that follows is “saints”. This page reads those three notes as a pick-up before bar 1, so bar 1 starts on that long G.