These are the easy piano songs on Online Piano Keyboard, sorted from very easy to intermediate. All sixteen are in the public domain, and each song page shows the letter notes (like E D C D E E E), the key, the time signature and the level, with a keyboard that can play the song for you or wait while you find each key. There is nothing to download and no account to create.
Very easy songs
These stay close to middle C, use only white keys and mostly move from one key to the next. Start here if you have never played the piano before.
- Hot Cross Buns: an old English street cry built on just three keys, C, D and E, with one bar of quick notes.
- Mary Had a Little Lamb: four keys, C, D, E and G, in a tune that starts on E and never leaves the C position.
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: six keys from middle C up to A, and a last line that repeats the first.
- London Bridge Is Falling Down: an English singing game played with your thumb on D; middle C arrives only on the final note.
- Row, Row, Row Your Boat: an American round in 6/8 time that climbs to G and later jumps to the C above middle C.
- Frère Jacques (Are You Sleeping): an 18th-century French round in which every bar is played twice.
Easy songs
Each of these adds one new challenge, such as a wider range, a dotted rhythm, a jump or a change of hand position.
- Ode to Joy: the theme from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which stays in the C position except for one low G.
- Jingle Bells: the chorus of James Lord Pierpont's 1857 song, with five fingers on five keys.
- Happy Birthday: in 3/4 time, starting below middle C, with an octave jump in the third line.
- When the Saints Go Marching In: an American spiritual and New Orleans jazz standard in which every line begins after a rest.
- Amazing Grace: the tune "New Britain," first printed in 1829 and sung to John Newton's words of 1779, in 3/4 time.
- Silent Night: Franz Xaver Gruber's carol, composed in 1818 in Oberndorf, Austria, and the highest-reaching of the easy songs.
- Brahms' Lullaby: the "Wiegenlied," Op. 49 No. 4, by Johannes Brahms (1868), a gentle tune in 3/4 time.
Intermediate songs
These bring in black keys and ask your hand to move around more. Try them once the easy songs feel comfortable.
- Für Elise (opening): the opening of Beethoven's Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, with the black keys D# and G#.
- Minuet in G: from the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, now credited to Christian Petzold; in G major, with F#.
- Canon in D (main melody): Johann Pachelbel's melody in D major, with F# and C#, opening in long, even notes.
What makes a song easy
The lists above are sorted by a few simple things:
- How many different notes it uses. Hot Cross Buns needs three keys and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star six. Every extra key is one more thing to find.
- Whether it fits one hand position. In the C position your right thumb sits on middle C and each finger covers one white key up to G. Jingle Bells fits it completely, while Happy Birthday asks your hand to move more than once.
- Steps or leaps. A melody that moves to the next key is easier than one that jumps, because the next finger is already in place.
- Rhythm. Notes of one or two beats are the easiest to count; dotted notes, quick pairs and 6/8 time take more attention.
- White keys or black keys. Every very easy and easy song here is in C major and uses only white keys. The intermediate songs add sharps, which are played on the black keys.
- Knowing the tune. A song you can already hum is easier to learn, because you can hear when a note is wrong.
How Listen and Practice work
Every song page has the same two modes.
Listen plays the whole song and lights up each key as it sounds. Use it first, to hear how the tune goes and to see where your hand will travel.
Practice lights up the next key and waits until you press it before moving on. Nothing happens until you play, so you can stop, look for a key and carry on at your own pace. After a few rounds, play from the letter notes alone, and go back to Listen whenever a passage is unclear.
Reading letter notes
Letter notes name each white key by a letter from A to G, and the pattern repeats all the way up the keyboard. The black keys are your landmarks: C is the white key just left of any group of two black keys, D sits between those two, and E is just right of them. The small number after each letter is the octave, and middle C is C4. Read the notes left to right, like words; each line of letters is one phrase of the song.
Where to start
If you are new to the piano, begin with how the piano keys are laid out so you can find middle C, then learn hand position and finger numbers. The first song lesson takes you through Mary Had a Little Lamb and Ode to Joy step by step in the C position. When a song goes well, play it on the full online piano, record it and copy a link that plays your recording for anyone who opens it.