Frère Jacques

Frère Jacques is a traditional melody dating from around 1780. In Freano it is rated “Easy” and is one of the app's 48 free public-domain pieces.

The app plays it at 104 beats per minute. The melody has 32 notes and takes about 18 seconds at full speed, so you can play it through several times in one short practice session.

It uses 7 different keys, from G3 to A4 — a span of 14 semitones.

Everything is on the white keys, which makes it a good choice in your first weeks.

The fastest notes are eighth notes.

It comes with a left-hand part in a block chords pattern that we wrote ourselves. Learn the right hand first, then the left, then put them together — the piece waits until you press both keys.

It also appears in the course as a lesson in “4. Play a piece”, where you play it one note at a time with the key lit up on the screen.

This melody was published in 1780, more than a hundred years ago, and is in the public domain. Freano only includes music that is at least a century old, enters the melody itself rather than copying anyone's arrangement, and writes its own left-hand parts.