Our Favorite Melodies

A Collection of Public Domain Melodies

Classical, Celtic, and World

Click on a title to see a score.

Each score is a printable PDF file.

Arran Boat Song

Be Thou My Vision

Brian Boru's March

Dakota Hymn

El Condor Pasa

Gavotte

Give Me Your Hand

House of the Rising Sun

Hungarian Dance No. 5

Minuet In G

Morrison's Jig

Now Unto Jehovah

O'Carolan's Air

Ode To Joy

Pachelbel's Canon in D

Peruvian Folk Song

Russian Lullaby

Sakura

Sarabande in D Minor

She Moved Through the Fair

Sheebag Sheemore

Song of Home - Korean

Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Tambourin

The Hurdy Gurdy

The Jasmine Flower

The Youngest Daughter

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

Trumpet Song

Trumpet Voluntary

Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Our Favorite Melodies

A Collection of Public Domain Melodies

Classical, Celtic, and World

Click to access melody score PDF files.

We are Duo Harpists. We have collected these melodies over the past 35 plus years for our harp repertoire and for alto and tenor recorder, autoharp, and bowed dulcimer practice.

All of these single note melodies are in the public domain. We hope you will find some of these melodies to be inspiring and enriching.

For some of the melodies we have taken the artistic liberty to revise some parts of the melodies. We have added some intros, endings, interludes, and ornaments. For some melodies, we wanted to have a piece be a little longer and to add a little variety. For some other melodies we strove for easier playing, possibly a simpler more basic elegant melody statement, avoiding accidentals, or a smaller range of melody notes. For two melodies we have added original interludes, The House of the Rising Sun and The Jasmine Flower.

Since reading music notation does not come easily to either of us, we tried to make the notation as large as possible. Larger is easier to read.

We used Score Writer, a more economical notation program to notate these melodies. We are not musical notation professionals. It is possible that we may have made errors. And, we may not have achieved optimal presentation. We hope that the large easy to read notation will make up for imperfections.

Please email if you would like any of the melodies in a different key. We will transpose to another key and send you an attachment.

Please email if you have any comments or questions. We'd be very interested to hear if you have one or more favorites. And, are there some other melodies that you love?

twoharps@gmail.com

Paul and Brenda Neal

Two Harps

Please note: For some of the recognizable melodies, especially the classical ones, the changes or additions we have made may not be your preference. If that is the case, it is possible to find simple to complex free printable scores online.

Click on a title to see a score.

Each score is a printable PDF file.

Music and Practicing 

Music is a Parallel Reality. Music a refuge.

Music expresses beyond words.

Paul and Brenda Neal

Suggestions for Practice

Recent studies have shown that practicing a musical instrument regularly may outweigh inherited aptitude in determining who is talented.

When we started in our late 20s to learn harp, we could not read a note of music. We made ourselves practice a half hour a day. Even it we had put it off until time to go to bed because we couldn't stand it. It was that bad. Even if we felt more like chopping up our harps for firewood. Slowly, by practicing, some notes began to group together and to actually sound like a cohesive melody.

Even 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes five days or two days a week will make a difference.

Playing an instrument is like meditating. One must focus. However, other thoughts float in or even intrude. It is a not a matter of combating the sneaky phantom thoughts but learning how to let them slide by, not fighting them but bumping them to the side.

Some musicians are all around geniuses. And some of us have different aptitudes and weaknesses. Personally we find that memorizing music is easier than the decoding involved in reading notes. For us memorizing the melody frees us up to be more expressive with the music, feeling it as a whole.

Is Practicing a Chore? Or is it vacation to a parallel reality?

Probably both and often in between.

There are days when practicing flows with one's day and, on the other hand, there are the mundane tedious, frustrating, once in a while even infuriating practice interludes. A voice in one's mind can ask, why do you bother? The voice can ask many disparaging and undermining questions. Over time the voice dims to a cricket in the background.

The fabulous benefits gained from playing an instrument are outlined in articles on the internet. Just hearing music causes “fireworks in the brain.” Actually playing an instrument draws on multiple areas of the brain. Three articles -

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/29/music-brain-ted-ed/

http://dana.org/News/Details.aspx?id=42947

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140103-music-lessons-brain-aging-cognitive-neuroscience/

Two Secrets to Keep Interested

Have a large enough repertoire with enough variety.

Divide the repertoire list into two, three, four, or more groups to rotate daily. Try to vary each smaller list by mood, speed, key, tempo, major/minor, lively/lilting, difficulty, and etc.

Occasionally weed out one or more songs that are not moving you and seek a replacement.

Expressive Playing

Play boldly. Recently we compared two versions of a Bach composition. Much to our surprise, we found that a lesser known musician played the Bach composition more expressively, more to our liking, than did a world renown musician.

Strive to use the whole dynamic range of your instrument.

Make a piece your own. By all means, play a melody differently from what the usual interpretation is if you feel it another way.

Nuances make a difference. Several years ago we heard bit of advice about playing music. This may have even been before we started harp lessons. On a public TV program about the Van Cliburn Piano Competition one woman judge said that in comparing musicians she looked for nuances of expression. She gave the example of if there is a series of four triplets, did the musician vary the emphasis of the beginning notes of the triplets? For some reason this view stayed with us. If a melody or passage is repeated, we try to at least subtly play something differently for the listeners, even if it is just ourselves, so the ear has a different experience. [Or when playing with one or more other musicians, the backup or accompaniment can vary and change also.]

Why do we bother with the repetition of practicing?

There is no getting around the fact that practice is repetition. So why do we bother with the repetition of practicing?

Because music expresses. Because music uplifts, transforms, soothes, embraces, enriches.

The most joy has come to me in life from my violin.

Albert Einstein

Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot

There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes by music.

Robert Browning

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which

they mightily fasten, imparting grace,

and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.

Plato

I know that I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.

Albert Einstein

... only music may span that space between the finite and the infinite ... music may be the means of arousing and awakening the best of hope, the best of desire, the best in the heart and soul …. Is not music the universal language?....Is it not a means, a manner of universal expression! Thus may the greater hope come.

Edgar Cayce,reading 2156-1

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla

What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be

perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.

Albert Einstein

Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having it’s own function and character, contributes to the whole.

Pythagoras

All that matters is that we continue to persevere and practice.