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Piano sheet music for kids · Children's song · Level 2: Left-hand chords
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 2/4, 8 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
The chords in this piece
Your left hand plays three chords in this piece. The shaded keys are the notes of each chord, and the numbers under them are the left-hand fingers (1 is the thumb). Oom-pah almost all the way: low C, then E and G together. Near the end come F, C and then low G with B, D and F. All the common piano chords, with diagrams →
C – E – G · Left hand 5 3 1
C, E and G: the home chord. Little finger on C, middle finger on E, thumb on G.
C – F – A · Left hand 5 2 1
C, F and A. The same three notes as F major, rearranged so the little finger stays on C; the thumb stretches up one key to A.
G – B – D – F · Left hand 5 3 2 1
G, B, D and F, the whole G7 chord. Little finger reaches down to the low G; the other three fingers play B, D and F together.
About this arrangement
The old ring game, not Ella Fitzgerald’s 1938 swing song: this is the tune William Wells Newell printed in 1883. It is in 2/4, two beats to a bar, and starts on a one-quaver pickup, “A-”. The whole tune uses only three notes, E, G and A. With the thumb on middle C, finger 3 plays E and the little finger plays G, then reaches up to A in bars 3, 6 and 7. Most of it moves in quavers (eighth notes), two to a beat, with a dotted crotchet on “dropped”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord, C almost all the way, with F and G7 near the end.
Practice tip: Clap the words before you play: “tis-ket, a-” is long-short-short, and the second line is all even quavers. Keep the little finger curved so it can reach A and come straight back to G.
The words
Atisket, atasket, a green and yellow basket, I sent a letter to my love, and on the way I dropped it.
A short history
The American folklorist William Wells Newell printed this tune in Games and Songs of American Children (1883), with the words “I tisket, I tasket, a green and yellow basket”, as a New York variation of the game he calls Hunt the Squirrel. A child with a knotted handkerchief circles the ring, taps another player on the shoulder and runs; the one touched picks up the handkerchief and runs the opposite way round, and the two race for the empty place. Newell notes that in England the game was called Drop-glove.
Alice Gomme’s Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (1894) has a Lincolnshire cousin, “Wiskit-a-waskit, a green leather basket”. The rhyme was first noted in the United States in 1879 and is number 13188 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
In 1938 Ella Fitzgerald and Al Feldman made the rhyme into a swing song, her breakthrough hit. That song is still in copyright, so this page uses the older game tune.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (American game, noted 1879; tune printed by W. W. Newell, 1883)
- Key
- C major, C position
- Time signature
- 2/4
- Length
- 8 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Skipping, crotchet = 104
- Difficulty
- Level 2: Left-hand chords (piece 18 of 201)
- Type
- Children's song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Chords
- C, F and G7 (diagrams above)
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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