About Happy Birthday to You#
The tune everyone sings over a cake started as a classroom greeting. Two Kentucky sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, wrote the melody as “Good Morning to All” in 1893 for the children they taught. The birthday words attached themselves later, and no one is quite sure who first paired them. For most of the twentieth century a publisher claimed the copyright and collected fees, until a US court ruled in 2016 that the familiar lyrics belong to everyone.
This setting sits in D and climbs to a high D on the “dear so-and-so” phrase, an octave leap that catches out new players. Take that line slowly at first. Once the jump is clean the rest stays in comfortable middle range, and the whole tune fits neatly on a 6-hole ocarina.
Happy Birthday To You (D) Ocarina Tab#
| D | D | E | D | G | F# | |||||
| D | D | E | D | A | G | |||||
| D | D | D | B | G | F# | E | ||||
| C | C | B | G | A | G |