Also see the Fake Books page for many more accompaniment options.
Below you will find “cheat sheets” with simple accompaniment versions of well known songs. Sing for yourself, or enjoy a sing-along or play-along with others. Here are the available selections, followed by instructions on how to use the cheat sheets.
For each song, you’ll see lists of chord names with occasional lyrics snippets. C/F/G versions use only those three chords, allowing even the most novice accompanists to take them on. More advanced players who know how to transpose using I/IV/V can use that alternative to play pieces in whichever keys they choose.
Full lyrics aren’t included for a few reasons — it keeps things simple for the musician to follow, packs as many songs as possible on individual pages, and reduces possible copyright issues. Of course, this means that whoever might want to sing along had better know or have all the words! But the provided lyrics snippets are designed to be enough for the accompanist to fit the playing with the singing. You’ll usually find more than one lyric cue line for each song, helping you to track what section of the song you’re up to with the singers.
Let’s use Jingle Bells as an example to see how you would use the brief lyric cues. Before the chords begin, you’ll see a line that says:
(Dashing through the snow…)
You’ll see that “Dash” and “snow” are both underlined. This means that “Dash” is to be sung when you first play the first chord listed right below the lyric cue, while “snow” is to be sung when you first play the second chord. Any words in between the two underlines are sung over the course of playing just that first chord, which we’ll get to in a moment.
Occasionally, a lyric cue begins with something not underlined. This means that singing begins before the chord starts, as in Auld Lang Syne where we sing “Should” before the chords come in with “auld.”
For actually playing the chords, ratio options are noted in parentheses next to each song’s title. For 1:2 or 1:3, you’ll simply perform that ratio for each printed chord. For 2×1:2 or 2×1:3, you’ll perform two of the given ratio for each printed chord. When more than one option is noted, choose whichever you like, and feel free to switch options mid-song to give a sense of development over time. Just note that the 2x options will keep your hands busier and so can feel a bit more challenging to play — you may find that the singers will need to sing more slowly for you to keep up a 2x ratio option.
As with any accompaniment, it’s always great to begin by learning the complete song with a 1:1 ratio, simply playing both hands together a single time for each chord symbol. This will teach the hands all the moves they need to make from chord to chord, and it will be the easiest way to get used to how the lyrics fit with the music. All of this provides the perfect foundation to make other ratio options very easy to do.