Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Who wrote the original tune to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? The same melody used in the alphabet song “A, B, C, D, E, F, G”? The popular nursery rhyme “Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool” also uses this melody. Wolfgang Amadeus famously wrote twelve piano variations on this theme, the French song “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman.” It’s the last piece we analyzed in my 8-week Music Theory Melody course in Zoom.

The Piano Guys made their own arrangement called “Twinkle Lullaby.” I discovered it while living on Maui and made this recording many years later on a visit. Can you hear the piano and the ukulele in this video of me making origami?

After publishing a fingerstyle ukulele duet arrangement in “Fun with Uke” book as one of the 24 nursery rhymes, I decided to arrange a solo instrumental version for high G ukulele

Chord Melody Arrangement for High G Ukulele by Anne Ku

I chose a simple introduction using C, G7 suspended 4, and G7 chords. You can keep repeating it until you’re ready to begin playing the song.

The first section of this 3-page arrangement is a simple three chord harmonization, as used in the duet.

In the duet version, I didn’t provide an introduction. But the same one can be used.

Instrumental Duet for high OR low G ukulele by Anne Ku

The second section of the 3-page PDF is my chord melody arrangement for high G ukulele with The Piano Guys’ harmonization in “Twinkle Lullaby.” You can play along to their video shown below.

Ukulele Chord Melody Arrangement of The Piano Guys’ Twinkle Lullaby for Piano & Strings by Anne Ku
A different harmonization to Twinkle Twinkle in C major

Just for fun, I made use of the different open string C major chords to end this well-known tune.

Solo instrumental ukulele ends in C chords
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