King Cotton, by Sousa
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for King Cotton
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (55 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 big beats to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in E♭ major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Cm7, B♭, E♭ and B♭m. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 55 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (83 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 2 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
Sousa wrote King Cotton in 1895 for the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, where his band played. This is the piano version published by the John Church Company, with the trio in A flat major.
How to play it
Keep the 6/8 swinging in two beats per bar. The opening runs in octaves need a loose hand, so practise them slowly and add speed only when they are even.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #634, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Sousa sheet music
Who Sousa was
American bandmaster who led the Marine Band under five presidents and then took his own band around the world, and whose marches are so thoroughly the sound of a certain kind of public occasion that it is difficult to hear them as compositions at all. The Stars and Stripes Forever is a national march by act of Congress. He designed the wraparound tuba that carries his name, wrote three operettas and several novels, and predicted, sourly and correctly, that recorded music would stop people making their own.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including E♭ major.