Greensleeves (arranged for beginners)

Learn this piece

Composer

Traditional (English, 16th century)

Arrangement

Musicanyya practice material

Level

Beginner

Key

E minor

Metre

3/4

Tempo

76 BPM

Length

17 bars, about 1 minute

Hands

both

Trains

A well-known minor-key melody in quarters and eighths over a single sustained bass note per bar - reading two staves together at a gentle tempo.

How to practise it

• The right hand does all the moving here, in quarters and eighths over one held bass note a bar. Loop bars 2-5 at 40 BPM and count '1 and 2 and 3 and' in each bar.
• Bars 10 and 14 start on a high D. Use the short rest at the end of bars 9 and 13 to move your hand up, and loop bars 9-14 until the move feels calm.
• Bar 17 closes the piece on two E's over a held bass E. Keep the gentle mp sound and let the left hand ring to the end of the last bar.

Where this score came from

Arrangement for this app (CC0)

An eighth-note pickup and 16 bars in E minor at quarter = 76. The right hand follows the source's melody note for note, with the changes listed in departures; the left hand holds one bass note per bar.

Changes from the source: Metre and rhythm: the tune's 6/8 is written as 3/4 (the same bar length), and every dotted-eighth-and-sixteenth pair is played as two even eighths. No raised 6th or 7th: D instead of D-sharp (bars 3, 7, 11, 12, 15), C instead of C-sharp (bar 9), so the piece stays within the Beginner limit on accidentals. Bars 7 and 15: the neighbour-note figure D#-C#-D# is played as one D, and the bar is G (quarter), F-sharp and E (eighths), D (quarter), so no more than four equal notes follow each other. Bar 12: the last note is B4, an octave above the source's B3, so the jump to bar 13 stays within an octave. Left hand: our own single held bass note per bar, taken from the source's bass line (G in bars 9 and 13, where its bass moves to G under the melody's C), instead of its four-part harmony.

Other versions

• Song - Greensleeves Intermediate

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