PlaysoloistStringsViolinSongsSt. Louis Blues
violin song · Strings
St. Louis Blues Violin Sheet Music & Notes
- Composer
- W.C. Handy
- Year
- 1914
- Key
- C
- Time
- 4/4
- Tempo
- 80 BPM
- Difficulty
- Easy · ★★
- First note
- G4
St. Louis Blues 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.
W.C. Handy, 1914 — public domain.
How to practise this on violin
St. Louis Blues is written in C and opens on G4, 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 80 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 40 notes across 12 bars, from C4 up to B♭4 in 4/4 time.
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Free on the App Store
Play St. Louis Blues — 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