PlaysoloistStringsViolinSongsThe Black Velvet Band
violin song · Strings
The Black Velvet Band Violin Sheet Music & Notes
- Composer
- Traditional
- Year
- —
- Key
- C
- Time
- 3/4
- Tempo
- 120 BPM
- Difficulty
- Beginner · ★
- First note
- G3
The Black Velvet Band on violin
The full melody, rendered as engraved treble-clef staff you can read on screen or print for the stand — free, and never truncated.
Trad. Irish ballad, 19th c. — public domain.
How to practise this on violin
The Black Velvet Band is written in C and opens on G3, so tune that string true before you draw a bow — on a fretless fingerboard the whole piece rides on where your first finger lands. Play the opening phrase slowly, one clean bow-stroke per note, and watch the pitch feedback rather than your hand: the app hears which notes drifted sharp or flat, which is the one thing a mirror can never show you.
Keep the bow parallel to the bridge and draw from the middle third for an even tone. Set the metronome well under around 120 BPM and don't raise it until you've been graded clean on two takes in a row. When a bar comes back red, loop just that bar — intonation improves fastest on the phrase you keep missing, not on replaying the whole piece from the top. By the numbers, this setting runs 44 notes across 17 bars, from G3 up to A4 in 3/4 time.
Also playable on
The same melody is graded across 6 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the The Black Velvet Band cross-instrument hub.
Keep exploring
Free on the App Store
Play The Black Velvet Band — and hear every note graded.
Soloist Violin reads this engraved treble-clef staff under the notation and grades your take on-device, note by note — free on iPhone, no ads, no account.
Get Violin on the App Store