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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 4: Up to the C above
Auld Lang Syne
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 16 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The New Year song, verse and chorus, and a lesson in the Scotch snap turned round: nearly every bar begins with a dotted crotchet and a quaver (“auld ac-”, “be for-”). The pickup is G below middle C, so the thumb reaches down; the verse then sits in C position with a stretch to A, and the chorus climbs to the C above on “We’ll”, so the hand moves up and back. Several words carry two notes, “auld” and “lang” in the refrain, and are written with a hold line. The left hand plays long chords on C, F, Dm and G7, one or two to a bar.
Practice tip: Play the first bar until “Should auld ac-quain-tance” has a clear long-short swing, then notice the same rhythm starts almost every bar. Hold the dotted minims at the ends of lines for their full count.
The words
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne. We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
A short history
Robert Burns sent the words of “Auld Lang Syne” to James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum in 1788, saying he had taken them down from an old man’s singing and adding verses of his own; they were printed there in 1796, the year Burns died, to a different tune. The melody everyone knows was joined to the words in George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs in 1799, and is itself an older Scottish dance tune.
“Auld lang syne” means “old long since”, or times gone by, and the song is a toast to old friendship: “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet”.
Scots emigrants carried it round the world, and Guy Lombardo’s orchestra, which played it at midnight on New Year’s Eve on American radio and television from 1929, fixed it as the song that sees the old year out.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (Scottish, 18th century)
- Words
- Robert Burns, 1788
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Warmly, crotchet = 96
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 123 of 201)
- Type
- Folk song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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