Amazing Grace (arranged for beginners)

Traditional (American hymn tune "New Britain")

Learn this piece

Amazing Grace (arranged for beginners), opening bars - piano sheet music
Composer
Traditional (American hymn tune "New Britain")
Arrangement
Musicanyya practice material
Level
Beginner
Key
G major
Metre
3/4
Tempo
72 BPM
Length
16 bars, about 1 minute
Hands
both

Trains

A well-known pentatonic melody with a one-beat pickup, in half, quarter and a few eighth notes, over a single sustained bass note per bar - gentle two-hand reading at a slow tempo.

How to practise it

  • Your left hand only holds one long bass note a bar, so let the right hand lead the tune. Start at 50 BPM with the Metronome: count 1, 2 and play the pickup D on 3, so the G of bar 2 falls on beat 1.
  • In bars 9 and 11 the dotted quarter lasts until the 'and' of beat 3, where the single eighth comes; bars 10 and 12 open with two even eighths. Count '1 and 2 and 3 and' and loop bars 9-12 until the eighths sit evenly.
  • The last phrase, bars 13-16, settles into half notes: hold each one for its full two beats. Keep it soft, as the p at the start asks, and listen for both hands landing on G together in bar 16.

Where this score came from

Arrangement for this app (CC0)

A one-beat pickup and 15 bars in G major at quarter = 72. The right hand plays the tune exactly as the source gives it, rhythm included; the left hand holds one bass note per bar.

Changes from the source: Left hand: our own setting, one held note per bar from E. O. Excell's bass, not his four-part harmony; where his bass moves, the longer note is kept (bars 9, 11, 12), C in bar 10, D in bar 14.

Other versions

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