Green notes: right hand, blue notes: left hand. Preview played right in your browser with the app's real piano (lightweight version). Inside Pianovera: full multi-layer sound, fingering display and Wait mode.
← Swipe the image to read the score →Beginning of the score, engraved by the Mutopia Project.View the whole score (PDF) →
Joplin sold this rag in 1902 for a handful of dollars. Seventy years later it won an Oscar in The Sting and became the sound of ragtime for everyone alive since. This MIDI lays the whole recipe bare: a metronomic left hand leaping between bass and chords, a syncopated right that always seems a sixteenth ahead of the beat. It still works.
Joplin printed the warning on his own scores: ragtime should never be played fast. We'll repeat it, because it's the number one mistake with this file. At a moderate tempo the swing settles in by itself. Push it, and the piece turns into a typing exercise while the left hand starts missing its jumps.
The Entertainer: the first notes
Right hand, in letter names (C4 = middle C): D6 E6 C6 A5 B5 G5 D5 E5 C5 A4 B4 G4 D4 E4 C4 G5 D4 D#4 E4 C5 E4 C5 E4 C5… The rest scrolls in the preview above, with the fingering, and the sheet music PDF has the whole piece.
Play The Entertainer on the virtual piano
Here are the virtual piano notes for The Entertainer, in computer keyboard letters: the first 8 bars of the melody. One key per note, read left to right; dark keys are the sharps, and a thin line marks each bar. The melody sounds an octave lower than written, so it fits on the keyboard.
Letters for a QWERTY keyboardYour keyboard: 36 notes
OPIYUTWEQNMB
XCZTXD
CQCQCQIO0
PIOPUOIXD
▶ Play on the virtual pianoThe piano opens with this piece loaded: the key to play lights up and waits for you.
What you'll be working on
The stride left hand: bass, chord, bass, chord, forever
Right-hand syncopation locked against a steady beat
The parallel thirds and sixths of the main theme
Staying loose on the leaps (from the shoulder, not the wrist)
Playing The Entertainer on piano with Pianovera
Start left hand alone in Wait mode until the stride is a reflex, then add the tune. Pianovera's hand colors make this split very readable, and an A·B loop isolates the two widest jumps in the trio section.
Open The Entertainer in Pianovera: the notes fall toward an 88-key virtual piano keyboard, each hand gets its color, and Wait mode is there if you're starting out. On a PC, it's falling notes piano software for Windows, with video export up to 4K.
Free, with no time limit and no ads: 30 pieces (10 in full, 20 in a simplified version), the first 10 lessons and 10 minutes of 3D hands (then 15 seconds per piece). Premium opens all 651 pieces.
Download The Entertainer MIDI and sheet music
Two files are waiting for you: The Entertainer piano MIDI file (22 KB, opens in Pianovera or any MIDI player) and The Entertainer piano sheet music PDF (249 KB, printable). Both come from the same engraving: what you read on the score is exactly what you hear in the preview.
The work itself is in the public domain, and this MIDI engraving was placed in the public domain by its typesetter on the Mutopia Project. Use it freely, videos included.
About this piece
Is The Entertainer hard to play on piano?
We rate it intermediate: 2621 notes over 4:13, spanning F1 to F#6. The first thing to work on: the stride left hand: bass, chord, bass, chord, forever.
Where can I get the sheet music for The Entertainer?
Right on this page: the "View the sheet music" button opens the PDF (249 KB), engraved by the Mutopia Project from the same source as the MIDI file, Public domain license. View it, print it, keep it.
Is The Entertainer MIDI file really free?
Yes. Scott Joplin died more than 70 years ago, so the work (1902) is public domain. This MIDI engraving is public domain too: download it and use it freely, videos included.
