Michael, Row the Boat Ashore

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore is a traditional melody dating from around 1867. In Freano it is rated “Easy” and is one of the app's 48 free public-domain pieces.

The app plays it at 96 beats per minute. The melody has 23 notes and takes about 20 seconds at full speed, so you can play it through several times in one short practice session.

It uses 5 different keys, from C4 to A4 — a span of 9 semitones.

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

The fastest notes are quarter notes.

It comes with a left-hand part in a broken 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.

This melody was published in 1867, 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.