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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
Loch Lomond
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 16 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.
About this arrangement
The Scottish song of the high road and the low road: a verse and the chorus, sung to the same tune. Each half starts with a pickup on the G below middle C (“By”, “O”), and the right hand covers nine notes, from that G up to the A above middle C, so the hand moves between C position and the notes below it. Look out for the pairs of quavers (eighth notes) on “bon-nie, bon-nie” and the dotted rhythm on “tak’ the” in the chorus. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord in each half of the bar, through C, A minor, F, G7 and D minor.
Practice tip: Play bars 2 and 6 slowly first; that is where the thumb has to tuck down to A and G below middle C. Then keep the long note at the end of each line held for its full count.
The words
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes, where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond, where me and my true love were ever wont to gae, on the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond. O ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye, but me and my true love will never meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.
A short history
“The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond” is number 9598 in the Roud Folk Song Index. One of the earliest printings was sheet music published by Paterson and Sons of Edinburgh in 1840, titled “Bonnie Loch Loman” and credited only to “a lady”. Loch Lomond is the largest loch in Scotland, and in Scots “bonnie” means beautiful and “braes” are hillsides.
The song is usually linked to the Jacobite rising of 1745, though nobody knows for certain who wrote it. One common reading is that the singer is a soldier who will never come home, and that the “low road” is the road taken by the souls of those who died far from Scotland.
Whatever its story, it has become one of the best-known Scottish songs in the world, sung at gatherings and played by pipe bands.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (Scottish, printed 1840)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Flowing, crotchet = 88
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 99 of 201)
- Type
- Folk song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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