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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Home on the Range
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 3/4, 32 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 cowboy song in waltz time, verse and chorus. It covers a full octave, from the G below middle C to the G above it, so the hand has to move: the thumb starts on that low G for the pickup (“Oh,”), the verse jumps up to F and G (“buf-fa-lo roam”, “deer”), and the chorus opens on the top G held for a whole bar (“Home”). Then the hand drops back down for “where the deer”. There are dotted rhythms (“deer and the”, “skies are not”) and notes tied over the bar line that need counting through. The left hand plays a waltz bass on C, F and G7 all the way.
Practice tip: Learn the start of the chorus first (bars 17 to 24): it has the big held notes and the jump down to the low G. Count “1 2 3, 1 2 3” through every tied note so the next phrase comes in on time.
The words
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.
A short history
The words began as a poem, “My Western Home”, by Brewster Higley, a doctor who had settled in a dugout on Beaver Creek in Smith County, Kansas. It was printed in the local Smith County Pioneer in 1873, and a friend, Daniel E. Kelley, set it to music; the two had it sung around the county within a year or two.
The song spread by ear across the cattle country and was collected by John Lomax from a Black saloon-keeper in San Antonio for his 1910 book Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. A 1930s copyright lawsuit over the song was thrown out when a lawyer traced it back to Higley and Kelley.
Kansas made “Home on the Range” its state song in 1947. Franklin D. Roosevelt called it his favourite song, and Higley’s restored cabin still stands near Athol, Kansas.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Daniel E. Kelley, 1870s
- Words
- Brewster Higley, 1873
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 3/4
- Length
- 32 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Easily, crotchet = 116
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 72 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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