Click here to jump straight to the TAB for “Rock-A-Bye Baby.”
If you ever hear someone tell you they know the “real” origin of “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” listen politely, say something like, “Oh, that’s interesting,” and then move on with your day knowing the truth: no one actually knows the true origin of the song.
You’ll find various theories online. “Metaphor for death” is a popular one with a few different versions circulating. “Metaphor for growing up” is another one, though that one at least makes an attempt at sounding legit by claiming that Native Americans were observed hanging papooses with newborns from tree branches while they worked gathering food. When the “bough broke,” the child was clearly old enough and didn’t need to be confined anymore.
The less-fun-to-talk-about reality is that “Rock-A-Bye Baby” is just an old folk song that has been around for centuries. The rhyme has had several variations, with several mentions in the historical record before first appearing in print in the 18th century. The first copyrights for the melody don’t pop up until the 1900s (several of them, in fact). Some were just filing copyright of their specific printed version without claiming ownership of the tune, but a few actually did try to claim it as an original creation. (I’m betting no one believed them.)
I’m not sure why anyone would have wanted credit for a song about keeping a baby in a tree on a windy day, but to each their own, I guess?
“Rock-A-Bye Baby” Playing Tips
There are a handful of songs in the “Children’s” category that I intend to combine in an article entitled “First Songs for Kids.” These songs are simple from beginning to end, many of them without so much as an eighth note to complicate things. “Rock-A-Bye Baby” is one of the songs that will be on that list. (If you’re here from the future and I’ve written that article, hello!)
However, there is one wrinkle that you can choose to add to “Rock-A-Bye Baby” to make it just slightly more challenging: You can play it with a dotted rhythm. Playing a piece with a dotted rhythm, a common practice in folk music, is a way of taking a simple, straightforward rhythm and injecting a bit of life into it.
Let’s look at two measures and compare the rhythms. Here’s the first measure of “Rock-A-Bye Baby” as written in the sheet music you can download below:
And here it is with a dotted rhythm:
You create a “dotted rhythm” by adding a dot. Simple, right? By changing the first quarter note to a dotted-quarter, you change its rhythm value from 1 beat to 1.5 beats. That extra half a beat gets subtracted from the next quarter note, making it an eighth note.
Expressing this in rhythm syllables, the measure goes from this:
TA TA TA
To this:
TA-I TI TA
Or to put it another way, adding a dotted rhythm takes a straight piece of music and injects a bit of bounce. You probably already sing “Rock-A-Bye Baby” in your head this way. You put extra emphasis on the word “Rock” and stretch it out a little bit: “ROOOCK-a-bye.”
The same goes for every measure of the song with three quarter notes: “OOOON the tree,” “WHEEEN the bow,” etc. If you play the song with the rhythm that is already in your head rather than playing it exactly as written on the page, you already know how to play with a dotted rhythm.
(The challenge might then be to put on a metronome and play this song straight. Fight your pre-existing knowledge of the tune and play it as written.)
Click the download button below if the embedded PDF doesn’t display correctly on your device. Don’t have a low G uke? Not a problem. I’ve included a standard (high G) TAB as well. Happy picking!
“Rock-A-Bye Baby” Low G Sheet Music Download
“Rock-A-Bye Baby” High G Sheet Music Download
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