TonalicsJOURNALOpen Tuner
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Nursery rhymesPublic domain · melody only

Frère Jacques

18th century · France · also known as Brother John, Are You Sleeping. The melody in letter notes, what it asks of an instrument, and the 26 instruments on this site that can play it — each with its own tabs or fingerings and the song ready to play.

  • Rangemajor sixth
  • Notes32, 6 different
  • ScaleMajor, no accidentals
  • Length hereabout 18 s

About Frère Jacques

A French round first written down around 1780. It is sung in most European languages, and Gustav Mahler used a minor-key version of it as the funeral march in his First Symphony.

Each of its four phrases is sung twice, and the four fit over one another, which is what makes it a round. The low note of its last phrase is taken an octave up here so the tune stays above middle C.

Play Frère Jacques on your instrument

26 of the 27 playable instruments here have every note it needs. 26 play it where the library writes it; the rest move it to another key or octave, and each page says which. Every page has the instrument itself, with the song loaded, above the notes.

Instruments that cannot play it

  • Guzheng — it would need G4, which it does not have in any size or key here.

Frère Jacques letter notes

Written in C major, from C4 to A4, with each note’s number in the scale under it — the form that transfers to any instrument. A dash holds a note another beat, an underline is half a beat, and each line is one phrase.

Frère Jacques — letter notes · tonalics.com

Where these notes come from

Traditional French round, published 1780. Public domain. The low G of “ding, dang, dong” is taken an octave up, where a 17-key has it.

No lyrics are printed on this page or any other here: these pages are about a melody and how to play it.

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