Happy Birthday to you

Who doesn't love getting birthday wishes and songs just for them on their special day? Communists, that's who.* Here are the chords you can use to wish your loved ones well. It's in the key of A, but really you can transpose it to any key you want.

 

 

In fact, here's a fun thing I read in Daniel Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession: "In 1890, Christian von Ehrenfels was puzzled by something all of us take for granted and know how to do: melodic transposition. Transposition is simply singing or playing a song in a different key or with different pitches. When we sing "Happy Birthday" we just follow along with the first person who started singing, and in most cases, this person just starts on any note that she feels like. She might even have started on a pitch that is not a recognized note of the musical scale, falling between, say, C and C-sharp, and almost no one would notice or care. Sing "Happy Birthday" three times in a week and you might be singing three completely different sets of pitches. Each version of the song is called a transposition of the others."

 

 

 

*Communists love birthdays just as much as everyone else.