Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

How hard is it?

Easy, and not because someone remembered it that way. These five numbers come off the melody itself, the same way the app grades its lessons.

Fastest passage

433 ms

per note, at 104 bpm

Ornaments

0

nothing to decorate

Quick leaps

2

of a fourth or wider

Span

14

semitones, G3 to A4

Black keys

0%

it never leaves its key

• nothing in it moves faster than about 433 ms a note, so the hands are never rushed
• it spans 14 semitones, wider than an octave
• it covers 76 notes across 10 phrases, which is how it is taught in the app, one breath at a time

What you can play it on

5 of the instruments in the workshop can teach this tune. Where the number differs from "all of them", the reason is the instrument, not the song: a diatonic kalimba has no sharps, and a pentatonic handpan or guzheng has no fourth or seventh at all.

• Piano at written pitch
• Guitar at written pitch
• Kalimba up 1 octave
• Violin at written pitch
• Accordion at written pitch
• Handpan not this one
• Guzheng not this one
• Drums not this one
• Xylophone not this one

Where this transcription came from

Mendelssohn's tune (the hymnal names it for him), public domain, from the Mutopia hymn edition in F, read down five semitones into C: mutopiaproject.org/ftp/Mendelssohn-BartholdyF/mendelssohn - midi_read.py mendelssohn.mid 0 76 --track 2 --voice (-5) Soprano and alto share the staff; --voice keeps the tune (a held "sing" the alto would otherwise split in two). Grows at the two closes the hymn writes: the verse-half landing on the tonic, the whole verse, then the "Hark!" refrain couplet.

Mutopia Project

Every melody in this catalogue is public domain and was transcribed from a named source, then checked against it by a tool rather than by ear. None of them was written down from memory - which is the usual reason two versions of a folk tune on the internet disagree.