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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 5: A wider range
Rock-a-bye Baby
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 8 bars. 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 lullaby, in a swaying 6/8. It is a piece for a hand that is ready to travel: “Rock-a-bye” starts on E and G, then leaps up an octave to the E above for “ba-by” and walks down, and the same leap comes back in bars 5 and 6. “Rock-a” is a dotted rhythm, a long E and a quick G. Bar 4 comes down to A and G for “will rock”, and the last line runs from G up to F and back to C. The left hand keeps a gentle bass-and-chord rock throughout, with F under “when the wind blows” and G7 under the falls.
Practice tip: Practise the leap in bar 1 on its own: thumb on E, second finger on G, then jump so the little finger lands on the high E. Keep it soft and slow; it is a lullaby.
The words
Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.
A short history
The words, “Hush-a-by baby on the tree top”, were printed in Mother Goose’s Melody in London around 1765, with a dry note underneath that it was a warning to the proud and ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last.
In England the rhyme was long sung to a variant of Lillibullero. The tune used here is the American one, which was popular enough by 1887 for a Boston music paper to list it in the street bands’ repertoire. It is credited to Effie Crockett of Rockland, Maine, a young actress who wrote it while minding a neighbour’s baby and published it in Boston under her grandmother’s name, Effie Canning; she died in 1940.
This arrangement follows the melody as printed in The Everyday Song Book (Chicago, 1927).
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (American, 19th century)
- Words
- English, c. 1765
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Gently swaying, dotted crotchet = 56
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 171 of 201)
- Type
- Nursery rhyme
- 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
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