About Home on the Range#
This is about as close to an official American cowboy song as the plains produced. The words began as a poem, “My Western Home,” written around 1872 by Brewster Higley, a settler and doctor living in Smith County, Kansas. A neighbor, Daniel Kelley, set it to music, and cowhands carried the tune across the West by ear, changing a line here and there the way songs do when they pass around campfires. Kansas made it the state song in 1947.
The melody wanders up to a high D and leans on a couple of accidentals, a D-sharp and an A-sharp, which are the fiddly spots on a 6-hole ocarina. Get comfortable with those two half-covered notes and the long, rolling phrases fall into place.
Home on the Range Lyrics#
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Home, home on the range, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Home on the Range Ocarina Tab#
| DOh, | Dgive | Gme | Aa | Bhome | ||||
| GWhere | Fthe | Ebuf | C-fa | C-lo | Croam | |||
| CWhere | Cthe | Ddeer | Gand | Gthe | Gan | F-te | G-lope | Aplay |
| D#Where | Dsel | G-dom | Ais | Bheard | ||||
| GA | Fdis | E-cour | C-a | C-ging | Cword | |||
| CAnd | Cthe | Bskies | Aare | Gnot | Fcloud | G-y | Aall | Gday |
| DHome, | Chome | Bon | A#the | Brange | ||||
| BWhere | Cthe | Ddeer | Gand | Gthe | Gan | F#-te | G-lope | Aplay |
| DWhere | Dsel | G-dom | Ais | Bheard | ||||
| GA | Fdis | E-cour | C-a | C-ging | Cword | |||
| CAnd | Cthe | Bskies | Aare | Gnot | Fcloud | G-y | Aall | Gday |