Easy Piano Sheet Music - Get Started With These Hits on Your Piano!
by
Elke Galvin • October 25, 2022 • 9 minute read
Finding easy sheet music for the piano isn't hard. If you are just starting out on the piano, you can impress your audience with simple versions of well-loved songs. Look no further!
Discover easy versions of songs you love! Whatever your preferred genre, you CAN play Yiruma, Yann Tiersen, Bach, and Beethoven! Why should advanced players have all the fun? Knock yourself out!
We'll also help you progress your piano playing so you'll eventually be able to play the originals on your piano.
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What Makes Sheet Music "Easy"?
Let's look at what "EASY" in sheet music can mean:
- Clearly structured notation: Have a close look at your selected sheet music before buying. Nowadays, sheet music services like OKTAV offer these beginner-friendly features:
- A logically structured notation layout. The clearer and more homogenous the arrangement is, the easier it is to find your way through it.
- Fingerings included, so you know which finger plays which note
- A parts feature that lets you spot the different parts of the piece with just one click
- A play-along feature so you know exactly, measure by measure, what you are supposed to play
- A Falling Notes feature so you can see which piano key to play next
- No, or very few, accidentals: Accidentals can psychologically make a piece seem more complex and harder to play than it is. This is why easy piano arrangements should not be fraught with accidentals. Don't worry: As a piano beginner you might wish for a world without accidentals, but you can handle a piece with one or two of them.
- Easy left hand: The simpler, calmer, and more constant the left hand is the more you can concentrate on the melody and your right hand. Pieces with an easy left hand will have notes that are close to each other in range and rhythm, and that are probably even in a repetitive pattern.
- Few jumps: How to recognize an easy linear melody: Notes follow each other "on a path" up or down and are within the range of notation you have learned to read and play, ideally within an Octave, or better even, within the range of a Fifth.
3 Types of Easy Arrangements
- Easy piano arrangements: This type of easy piano sheet music is ideal for beginners of any age. Clear notation, few accidentals, a calm left hand, an easy rhythm, etc. guarantee a great sound and learning experience, well suited to be played to an audience!
- Leadsheets with chord symbols: Leadsheets can look simple because they just notate the song's vocal melody, and if you combine it with a simple chord progression you might produce a polyphonic sound experience that can be quite motivating. But - the devil is in the detail. Chords may be more intricate than they seem at first glance, and you have to decipher and translate each symbol into what it tells you to play on the keyboard. This may tire a beginner.
- Children's piano books: Children's songs are easily recognizable, they usually have a regular rhythm and a structured, repetitive song pattern. This makes them ideal for piano beginners. Adults, however, are often underwhelmed when expected to start their piano journey playing music for children.
3 Easy Neoclassical/New Age Favorites You Can Play
"River Flows in You" by Yiruma
This piece by South Korean composer Yiruma is probably most famous for NOT being featured in the “Twilight” series. Fans proclaimed it the perfect piece for Edward to play to his love interest Bella. Twilight producers were considering it. In the end, they settled for something else. But this did not stop Yiruma’s piece from climbing charts all over the world. To this day, it has remained a favorite for piano players. While the original more advanced arrangement sparkles like moonlight hitting the river surface, our easy version of "River Flows in You" glows like a ray of sun dancing on the waves. Try it!
"Le Onde" by Ludovico Einaudi
Virginia Woolf's novel "The Waves" inspired Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi to write his first album "Le Onde" (which means "The Waves" in Italian). Visualize a long sandy beach, and a lonely man walking along its waterline, never meeting anyone, but occasionally looking at objects - a stone, a wave, a crab. Apart from the waves, he hears a seagull scream every now and then. Our easy version of "Le Onde" lets you dream of the sea, the clouds, and a wide horizon. Enjoy!
"Comptine d'un Autre-Été" by Yann Tiersen
We love this piece's easy playfulness and the way it evokes pictures of a joyful afternoon spent playing in a French park. Yann Tiersen's enchanting soundtrack to the 2001 hit movie "Amelie" contains many other lovely melodies - but try this easy version of the main theme, and leave your worries behind while you take a romantic piano journey to France!
3 Easy Classical Pieces You Know By Ear
"Für Elise" by Ludwig van Beethoven
This piece is not only a joy to play, it has arguably got the most famous hook line in all of music history! Beethoven himself cared so much for "Für Elise", that he rewrote it 3 times before he was fully satisfied with it. The original version is somewhere between beginner and advanced - ideal for intermediate players with 1-2 years of experience. If you want to experience the piece's flow in a version that has defused many of its challenges, try this version and fall in love. If you'd like a step-by-step tutorial to learn all the parts, you can have that, too.
Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel
Imagine how chuffed Johann Pachelbel would be if he knew that his Canon in D is still popular 300 years from the day it was first performed! Pachelbel wrote it back in the day for J. S. Bach's elder brother's wedding. Our easy version is perfect if you're a beginner with some piano experience. Prefer a step-by-step tutorial? We hear you, loud and clear! If you've got a solid piano foundation and want a good challenge, we have seriously ambitious versions, too. However, the deep repeating bassline we all love is all there in our easy version, as is the famous chord progression of D - A - Bm - F#m - G - D - Em - A.
"Air on the G string" by Johann Sebastian Bach
The German 19th-century Violinist August Wilhelmj transposed this piece, originally in D-major, to C-major and conveniently played the whole first part of it on his violin while solely using the G string. The nickname stuck! This is the Second Movement of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D-major. You might also recognize a likeness of some of the melody in Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale". Our easy version is almost a meditation on black and white keys!
3 Easy Traditionals/ Folk Songs to Start With
Wellerman
This New Zealand sea shanty went viral on Tiktok, and suddenly everyone wanted to play it. We understand why! It is fun to learn, and once you start you'll whistle it all day long. Try to play "Wellerman" with a bouncy sailor-walking-on-board-of-a-ship vibe, and make sure to play it fast enough! There's a tutorial as well.
Bella Ciao
No one knows who wrote this protest song in the late 19th or early 20th century Italy. What we do know is that antifascist fighters chose it as their hymn during the Second World War, and that the Netflix series "Money Heist" featured "Bella Ciao" quite heavily. Political meaning aside, it is a lively, easy-to-play piece we're sure you'll enjoy. And we have a tutorial, too - even a free one.
Sur Le Pont d'Avignon
This French Folk song is much older than the other two. Some even say it dates back to the 14th century! We don't know whether anyone really danced on top of the bridge across the river Rhone - there are speculations that originally the song was called "Sous Le Pont d'Avignon" ("below the bridge of Avignon") because people danced on an island underneath the bridge because that was where the Avignon entertainment quarters used to be. Anyway, it is a charming tune, perfect for beginners. Try it here!
3 Easy Movie Soundtracks You'll Love
Schindler's List Theme by John Williams
Steven Spielberg's 1993 masterpiece won 7 Oscars and 3 Golden Globes. John Williams's music won one of the Oscars, among other music prizes. The movie's "Theme" is originally played by violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman in a way that evokes chills and goosebumps. In our arrangement for piano, you'll be able to bring this expressive, heart-wrenching melody alive with your own hands.
Hedwig's Theme (Harry Potter) by John Williams
Far from being a children's movie, "Harry Potter" enchants audiences of all ages. "Hewig's Theme" captures the magic of the very first novel, again composed by perhaps the greatest soundtrack composer of our time, John Williams. He had already won several Oscars and other prizes when he composed this piece which critics claim is one of his best creations. With the first few notes played on a piano sounding like a bell, this film's music takes on a life of its own. Feel its magic fill your home!
He's A Pirate (Klaus Badelt)
The "Pirates of the Caribbean" series does not owe its success solely to the rugged charms of Captain Jack Sparrow. Klaus Badelt's suspenseful music makes you want to board a pirate ship and see new horizons. "He's A Pirate" first set sail in 2003. Hans Zimmer is rumored to have written most of the themes in one night. Then he handed the project over to Klaus Badelt because he already had too much on his plate. Badelt took on the job and created an iconic soundtrack. Little-known fact: Helping Badelt on this soundtrack was the then-unknown Ramin Djawadi who later rose to fame for composing another iconic soundtrack - the one for "Game of Thrones".
3 Easy Popular Rock & Pop Songs
"You Are So Beautiful" by Joe Cocker
Written by the ingenious keyboarder (and "fifth Beatle") Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher, this song was released in 1974 and became Joe Cocker's biggest solo hit in the US. "You Are So Beautiful" was featured heavily in films and advertising. The song is originally in the key of Ab-major, but for our easy version, we have changed it to D-major - fewer black keys to worry about!
"The Scientist" by Coldplay
This piano ballad, originally in F-major, was published on the band's second album in 2003. "The Scientist" centers around an apology sung by Chris Martin, partly in a falsetto voice, and heavy, regular piano chords. It peaked at #10 in the UK charts and won 3 MTV awards. Martin claims he wrote the song after listening to George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass".
"Can You Feel the Love Tonight" by Elton John
This song, written by Elton John as part of his 1994 Disney project "The Lion King", not only topped charts around the world for weeks, it won Elton an Oscar and a Grammy. He explains that he had written it in the tradition of the great Disney love songs. A survey in 2020 showed that couples who chose this song as their wedding song were more likely to stay together.
Elke Galvin is a British-Austrian singer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer. She has worked both as a musician and journalist for over 25 years. Not only is she an acclaimed songwriter, she loves to write about music, too! Making music theory easy to understand is her passion, as is writing about music styles, music and the brain, and how to have fun learning and playing music.
First of all, congratulations! If you have taught yourself the famous "didadidadiadiadadaaah..." by ear, that's awesome. However, may we gently inquire whether you have actually listened to the whole piece as Beethoven intended it? It is quite a long piece, played from scratch, and many beginners can only play its first part and wonder what all the talk of difficult passages is about. We challenge you to not leave out any parts, as "Für Elise" reveals its beauty best if played from beginning to end.
