How much do you think you know about Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star?

Maybe you have a good ear and have figured out that other children’s songs share the same tune, like ‘Baa, Baa Black Sheep’, the ‘Alphabet Song’ and perhaps even a German children’s song about ducks not as well known in the English-speaking world.

Maybe you’ve heard the Mozart variations (and know the French title). If you’re familiar with other classical music, maybe you’ve suspected something fishy was going on with Smetana’s The Moldau?

Or, if you’re more into popular music, maybe you’ve heard Twinkle’s star appearance in Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I Used to Know’, or even sleuthed it out in ‘What a Wonderful World’ (if not, think “I see trees of green…” to Louis Armstrong’s voice and you’ll hear it).

As I started working on this post, nothing prepared me for how deep and wide my search for this tune would go. It’s led me with bread crumbs on a 450-year quest along a winding path through countries, over continents, languages and musical styles. It surprised me how completely this tune has permeated the very fabric of western music.

The origins of the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star tune go back into a distant past in European culture and history. It’s so distant that no one has been able to identify it with certainty. It has travelled musician to musician, community to community and country to country over centuries.

Imagine the children’s game of Telephone, in which players whisper a phrase from ear to ear, down a long chain of people. What’s said in the beginning usually changes by the end. That’s the story of the Twinkle tune (the overarching name I’m using for it). In fact, when you hear the original you may or may not hear the similarity.

Beginning to search for Twinkle

My journey of discovery is somewhat like the journey of the tune, itself. I’d like to share my process with you. I invite you to grab a front row seat! This post touches on my thought process and offers transparency.

No AI was used in the development of this series. It has taken me several years, off and on, to compile the tunes that all contribute to Twinkle’s vast family tree.

It all started with Mozart and a Burlesque

The first time I encountered the Late Elementary piano piece ‘Burlesque’ as a young piano teacher in the mid-90s, I noticed something peculiar. It’s a little piece that was attributed to Leopold Mozart from a music notebook traditionally thought to be a gift to his young son, Wolfgang. I immediately recognized it as the Twinkle tune with a few extra embellishments.

A theory started working in the back of my mind, that the young Wolfgang Mozart had heard the French version of Twinkle on his first trip to Paris as a child (Ah! vous dirai-je, maman), and that he, himself, had composed Burlesque, not his father, based on the French tune. In my theory, Mozart composed it like a variation, and with its off-kilter beats, like a joke. Then, when he was a young man seeking employment in France, he remembered his earlier fascination with the tune and composed his larger set of piano variations as a way to endear himself to a potential French employer.

In January, 2021, I was happily crafting a blog post on my Burlesque theory. I wrote how the child composer had written odd little two-and-a-half measure phrases and that his father had left them intact. I proposed that this was an early example of Mozart’s musical efforts (and humour), and also an example of how his father had let the child compose without correcting ‘mistakes’. I wanted to release the post in time for Mozart’s birthday on January 27th.

Then I was stopped in my tracks by a statement that said the notebook was now thought to be a forgery. According to past interpretation, the notebook was given to Wolfgang as a present on his seventh birthday, Oct. 31st 1762. We’ve all been taught that Mozart’s birthday is on January 27th. So, for music historians, the October date cast doubt on the notebook’s authenticity.

An aside. In the archival community, it is well known that in the Eighteenth century, some officials recorded dates of birth and others dates of baptism. So, it’s unclear to me how one could know whether January 27th was Mozart’s actual date of birth or his date of baptism. Because he was Catholic, there is room for question. Therefore, until further research is done, I believe the notebook should remain an item of interest as a book handwritten by the Mozarts, and not a forgery.

Long story short, I decided to scrap my blog post on my theory that the child Mozart had composed Burlesque and instead, wrote Leopold Mozart’s guide on how to teach composition to creative kids.

But a spark had been ignited in me. I wanted to know more about the origins of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Why had it appeared with extra notes in this little German keyboard composition?

Digging around

A year later, after asking around online, after listening to many variant performances in YouTube videos, after figuring out many variants by ear and writing them in pencil by hand, typesetting them in Finale, printing, then comparing them to each other by adding annotations with coloured pencils, aaaaaand grouping them into likely branches of Twinkle’s family tree by language, geography and sometimes by century, as well as by rhythmic and melodic artefacts in the music itself (similarities), I released the first few blog posts on my findings. [N.B. This current first post is a newly edited and updated first post, the original Part I now split between Parts II and III.]

I began to feel like a long distance music archaeologist. From my laptop in Nova Scotia, Canada, I was able to dig around the music traditions of Europe by listening on the internet, doing bird’s-eye audio research that wouldn’t have been possible 30 years ago. Every YouTube video I watched had new comments from YouTube users about other similar tunes, sometimes in broken English. I’d research those tunes, read more comments and find even more variants.

I’d google the new-to-me titles and find articles in languages I couldn’t read. But with google translate, was able to piece together the melodies and stories of an ever-growing network of Twinkle tunes. Every new find felt like a priceless nugget, a treasure, or an old friend.

Most of the comments online only made the connection between two or three of the tunes. Nowhere did I find the entire body of variants explained together, so I felt like I was the first to attempt to piece it all together. It was exciting work.

Every musician I asked, every comment I read, and the information available on Wikipedia, all pointed to Italy as the starting point. The madrigal published in 1600 by Biado, Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi, was the earliest iteration anyone could name.

My original blog post reflected the information available. I joined the voices that said Biado’s madrigal had started it all. And perhaps it did.

Part II of our series sets foot in 17th-century Italy and explores four composed versions found there.

---

Discover the 17th-century Renaissance-to-Baroque Italian versions of one of the world’s most-loved melodies, complete with music samples. Here’s the next chapter of the story as we know it. This music holds clues to the exact Italian versions that influenced contemporary spread across the European continent. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part II: Then there was a madrigal in Italy [Printables]

---

Questions

But it didn’t seem right to me to just assume that Biado’s version was the very first. So, I kept searching for an elusive melody that might suggest that the tune existed before Biado.

1) Early folk versions may be a litmus test

As I collected more and more versions, I noticed that while there were several composed versions of Twinkle in 17th-century Italy, there weren’t any old Italian folk versions (so far I haven’t found any).

France and Belgium had several composed versions, but besides, there is also a plethora of folk versions.

Why?

In my mind, the key to finding the epicentre (the origin) of the Twinkle tune, is to find the place where it had been played and sung for so long that it was heard not only in courtly circles, but had also permeated the entire culture.

I suspected that the Twinkle tune had its origin somewhere in a French-speaking region, solely based on the number of folk versions found there, compared to the relatively few found in Italy.

But the evidence is mixed. The 17th-century Scottish variant, ‘My Mistress is Prettie‘, was from a French suite of lute music by a Mr. Mouton, suggesting an origin in France. The 17th century English variant was called, ‘An Italian Rant’, suggesting an origin in Italy. Two centuries later, Tchaikovsky called his variant, ‘Old French Song’. And so on. The evidence is never conclusive.

The only Italian folk version of Twinkle I’ve been able to find is ‘Brilla, Brilla La Stellina‘, which is a direct knock-off of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, the 19th-century English folk adaptation of the 18th-century French-language folk song ‘Ah! vous dirai-je, maman.’ This means that Italy didn’t get a folk version until Twinkle was already so popular as an English children’s song that Italian parents wanted a version for their own kids (it’s unclear to me when this Italian version first appeared–possibly in the 20th century).

2) Early style of music

Another thing that doesn’t sit right with me is the style of the earliest-known versions. The tune Biado used in Fuggi, figgi, fuggi seems to be in a Renaissance style of music and influenced by Medieval music, with part of it in the distinct Dorian mode.

Then there is the matter that the tune seems to lend itself to being sung like a round or a canon, with a leading solo voice, then after a few notes, the next voice playing chase. Contrapuntal music did flourish in the Baroque period: think Bach Inventions, or fugues by him or other composers, both vocal and keyboard. But with Biado’s madrigal clocking in at precisely 1600 (the year most people choose as the starting point of the Baroque), Fuggi, figgi, fuggi doesn’t act like Baroque counterpoint, but seems to lend itself to being sung like earlier high Medieval or Renaissance contrapuntal motets.

Both the fact that it sounds modal and can be sung in counterpoint, suggest to me that the tune may have already been passed down from a much earlier time period in European music history.

I’d like to reach out to music librarians and musicologists across Europe, especially in the French and old Flemish-speaking regions of France and Belgium, to keep an eye out for possible old music scores that resemble the early Twinkle melodies.

How to recognize a Twinkle tune

Before we get to my third point as to why I’m questioning Italy as the source of the Twinkle tune, let’s be sure you have the basics on how to recognize this music in its older forms.

The time signature

The vast majority of the titles based on the Twinkle tune have two beats per measure. From the Burlesque in the children’s book, to Biado’s version in Italy, to Mozart’s variations, from Scotland to Russia most are in 2/4.

The keynote

Most Twinkle tunes begin with the tonic (or keynote) on the first downbeat (beat one).

Remember that for the purposes of comparison, we are analyzing all Twinkle tunes to have the same keynote, G. Music in other keys will be transposed (moved to this tonic note).

Some Twinkle tunes begin before beat one, on an upbeat. This is because some of the poems being sung to the tune begin with a weak word like ‘O’ or ‘The’. In the following example, ‘Ik’ is on the upbeat, followed by emphasis on ‘zag’ on the downbeat.

This weak word will be sung on the weak beat (the upbeat), and the following syllable that requires more emphasis will be sung on the strong beat (the downbeat) on G.

This means some Twinkle tunes open with a different pitch that prepares for and leads to G.

But even with different starting notes and upbeats, the fact remains that the first note that falls on a downbeat is always the tonic: and in our analysis, this is G.

Up the fifth

All Twinkle tunes then go to the fifth note of the scale (called the dominant) on the next downbeat. In the key of G, this fifth note is a D.

In every variant, what we’re always watching for and listening for is this G-to-D pattern. Because it spans five notes on the staff and five tones or keys on the piano, it’s called a fifth interval.

In the Twinkle tune, there is no variance from this genetic blueprint. Every single Twinkle tune contains this fifth interval. It’s ingrained in Twinkle’s very DNA.

How we get from G to D changes somewhat from variation to variation. Here’s where it gets interesting and perhaps a little confusing for some listeners.

In the most famous version (shown above), Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, the tune has repeated notes: G-G-D-D. But the overall G-to-D blueprint is there.

As you discover the Twinkle variations throughout this series, you will notice that some melodies navigate this jump from G to D with steps: going note-by-note or key-to-key from G to D. On a piano this would be G-A-B-C-D, all on white keys, in G Major.

Other melodies also step from G to D, but in the minor: so, G-A-B-flat-C-D. This is where some listeners may begin to lose sight of (or sound of) the ‘Twinkle’ tune.

From G to D there may be steps (seconds), skips (thirds), leaps (like the open fifth), repeated notes, or a run of notes. The tune may be in a major or minor mode.

But always remember, the shape we are looking for is G on the first downbeat, going up to D on the next downbeat. It is interesting to note that the older the tune is, the more likely it is to be in the minor mode.

The rhythm may vary.

There may be a preceding upbeat on different scale tones.

The details don’t really matter, because the first defining feature of our Twinkle melody, the first box that must be checked, is simply that the tune has this G-to-D shape in the first two full measures. It must navigate this interval of the fifth to be considered a candidate for the Twinkle family tree.

The upward stretch

The second box that must be checked is that after the G-to-D fifth there’s one more step up to the sixth degree of the scale, to E. If you sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ this is when you sing the word ‘little’.

Actually, this isn’t entirely true. Several versions avoid the sixth degree and ping-pong above D, above the fifth degree, with a mixture of other notes. But they are higher than D, and follow the general contour of stretching the melody above the fifth degree of the scale.

So, let’s rephrase that. At this spot in the tune, most versions step up one more note. In major keys, this is usually a step up to E. In minor keys, it’s normally a step up to E-flat. Either way, it’s a step up and is nearly universal.

The feature you can count on after this upward nudge, whether on the E or bouncing around notes in that vicinity, is that the tune next settles firmly back down on the fifth degree, the D. In ‘Twinkle’, this is when you sing the word ‘star’.

All variations settle on the dominant, or D, at this point. In music-speak, the dominant note returns on the downbeat of the fourth full measure.

Inching back down the scale

Next there is usually a section of falling back down. This is where we sing, ‘How I wonder what you are.’

Some variants, like Twinkle (above), get there directly with simple notes that step down, each one repeating. Others, like the Burlesque (below), meander a little: sometimes up, sometimes around, sometimes with little extra notes.

But the general consensus amongst most variations is this: here’s where they move downwards. By the time they reach the bottom, they’re back on the tonic, or keynote, G.

Many of the older versions will repeat this entire opening melody, from the G-to-D ascending fifth, upwards to E, back down to D, then inching steadily back down to the tonic on G. Through twice.

Even Mozart’s variations run through this entire opening melody twice. It’s interesting to note that the sung French folk song upon which he said he’d based his variations didn’t have this repeat. So, Mozart must have been familiar with other variants and how they were structured with the repeat.

In some versions the opening is sung only once, as we do in Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Middle section may vary, but usually…

For most of us, the middle section is, ‘Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky.’

But it’s in the middle section where there is the most divergence between all the versions. When the tune made its way around Europe, it seems like the opening was so simple that passers-on were able to deliver it with a good deal of accuracy. For new listeners, it stuck.

But, then the middle got a little fuzzy in the minds of those trying to remember what they’d heard. Sometimes they remembered and were able to approximate it, so the middle turned out similar to (though never the same as) other pre-existing versions. But in other instances, it seems a musician completely forgot the middle and had to get inventive. So, they made up a brand new one.

However, that being said, the middle sections are often of a descending melody. Many of the tunes in this spot share a very interesting series of intervals: Tone-Semitone-Tone (step-half step-step), or on the piano, G-F-E-D or D-C-B-A (the semitone is where there are two white keys in a row with no black key between). Sometimes this downward tune is direct and at other times it meanders with other notes added or mixed in.

Most versions finish by repeating the beginning

In Twinkle, there is often a structure of ABA, or same-different-same. This means we sing or play the opening as described above, have a contrasting middle, then in the end, circle back to the music from the opening.

In Twinkle, we sing once again, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.’ This rounds out the ABA structure into ternary form, a piece of music with three sections, the first and third being the same.

But if a Twinkle variation doesn’t return to this A section in the end, don’t get thrown off! In some countries and cultures, there’s an extension of the B section and that becomes the end.

Now that you’re up to speed on how to spot a Twinkle variant, let me introduce you to the tune that is causing me to doubt that Italy was the primary source of Twinkle.

3) Contemporary sister-tune

The third piece of evidence that leads me to question Biado as the original creator of the Twinkle tune is the existence of a contemporary Dutch sister-tune.

It is true that Biado’s madrigal influenced a whole generation of 17th-century spinoff tunes throughout Italy and across Europe. This may have been the world’s first international #1 hit. Biado’s tune seemed to top all the charts. It got people up on the dance floor! In melody and structure, the various spinoff tunes bear so many similarities to Biado’s madrigal that there’s no question that they are derived (at least in part) from his version.

But what if there was another early 17th-century version that could suggest that it and Biado’s madrigal were both descended from a common ancestral tune which was much older than either of them?

Adrianus Valerius (1575-1625) was a Dutch poet and composer. He wrote a poem, ‘O Nederland let op uw saeck‘, and set it to music. His published volume of work was highly unusual for the time because most books of poetry merely suggested a title of a tune with which to sing the words, but his also printed the music.

Because his music was compiled before (and printed by) the year c.1625-6, this becomes a datable reference proving that Valerius knew an early version of the Twinkle tune much earlier than any previously-known 17th-century spread within Italy, let alone across Europe. This puts it in the timeframe of possibly being contemporary with Biado’s madrigal.

Because it seems Valerius used a tune he already knew, by deduction this means he needed to have learned it somewhere before the dates of publication. So, the years 1625-6 are not to be confused with a date of creation, but are to be understood as the release dates of his ongoing project (in fact, his book was published posthumously).

If Valerius had copied Biado’s madrigal, his music would have sounded more like the madrigal. In the children’s game of telephone, the closer you are to the original source, the more accurately you will repeat or copy. The fact that Valerius’s tune is similar to, yet not the same as, Biado’s madrigal, suggests that it was developed independently. In other words, it makes it less likely that Valerius was influenced by Biado, and more likely that both Biado and Valerius were referencing an older commonly-known tune.

If it were to be argued that Valerius’s music for ‘O Nederland let op uw saeck’ was original to him, then it must be agreed that he unknowingly copied familiar music. There are enough key points of similarity to Biado’s madrigal to suggest a connection between the two.

When you listen to the upcoming video of ‘O Nederland let op uw saeck’, keep in mind the following:

• This is a very early version, so it does not immediately sound like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

• The first word is ‘O’, a weak syllable, so it comes on an upbeat which leads into the G tonic note on the downbeat of the first full measure.

• This is in the minor mode, so it has a sad type of flavour compared to the Twinkle we know. But besides this sad sound, it follows the same melodic framework as Twinkle.

• The melody goes up the fifth from G to D, and gets there stepping note-by-note up the scale. On a piano this sounds like each key in a row up the G minor scale: G-A-B-flat-C-D.

• Instead of stretching directly up to E, this one ping-pongs over before finding E then settles back on D. It should be noted that the E doesn’t sound like the one we expect because it’s adjusted to E-natural from the usual E-flat we’d expect in G minor. This gives the music an unusual twist. It should also be noted that if you erase the rest of the minor steps from the melody, this G-D-E framework is strangely familiar (note: the same notes as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, more than a century before the latter emerged in a major key in a nearby geographical region).

• This version repeats only the beginning of the opening melody. To compare it to the Twinkle we know, it goes (slowly) ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star, Twinkle, twinkle little star’ and leaves out the downward-stepping ‘How I wonder what you are’ phrase endings.

• The second section sounds like it deviates from what we’d expect in Twinkle. But when compared to the late 17th-century version found in Belgium, ‘Ik zag Cecilia komen’, it becomes evident that both the Dutch and Belgian versions share key B-section melodic touchpoints in common, which are absent from the Italian iterations. In fact, in this early Dutch version, we find the basis for the tune that eventually becomes the B section of ‘Ah! vous dirai-je, maman‘ and later, the ‘Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky’ phrases in ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. Further, the fact that the Belgian ‘Ik zag’ seems to have been influenced both by Italian versions and by this Dutch tune, suggests that a blending occurred once the Italian music spread to the Belgian region. Rather than the Italian music being new, it seems to have been an arrangement of music with which they were already familiar. Old and new may have mixed together into an Italian/Dutch/Belgian hybrid melody, which became ‘Ik zag Cecilia komen’. It is this second section of ‘O Nederland’ that offers the biggest piece of evidence that Biado was likely not the first to create the tune to which he set ‘Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi’.

• The ending of ‘O Nederland‘ seems unique but does have four descending notes which are reminiscent of ‘How I wonder what you are’.

Similar or different?

Now that you’ve heard a variant, answer this: did you hear the outline of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or not?

If you did, congratulations! You’re a star!

If you didn’t, don’t worry! Travel down the Twinkle road with me and listen to the rest of its variants. Eventually you will hear how they’re all interconnected!

If you’ve read this far, here’s a thrilling little thought that I’d like to leave with you. I’d like to suggest that it is possible that this melody is older than old. It is possible that it is ancient. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s ingrained in our human DNA, much like birdsong is innate to a songbird. Yes, birdsong must be taught as well, but many birds know general versions of their songs even if they’ve had no parents to teach them the exact pitches and rhythms.

It’s the similarity with tunes that may be derived from Africa that has led me to wonder this. ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore’ sung by African Americans on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, and ‘Kumbaya’ from the Gullah-Geechee coastal community in South Carolina and Georgia also closely follow the Twinkle melodic framework described above, starting with the G-to-D fifth and so on.

Is it possible that music is born inside, just waiting to be awakened? Is it possible that Twinkle has spread so far and wide because it is the perfect melody, our innate human tune?

More to explore!

This is the first instalment of a series of blog posts on this seemingly universal melody. Join me as I continue through time and across the European continent (and beyond) in search of more versions and variations.

This melody’s scope of influence cannot be underestimated. It would be difficult to find a child or adult from a western country (or even a country that is influenced by western music) who has not heard, sung or played this tune.

If you’d like to compare and contrast the melodies mentioned in this post, you’ll find the music in my printables section in the section called Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. N.B this series is a work-in-progress, so I have yet to release some of these tunes.

Italy’s Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi by Biado

Netherlands’s O Nederland let op uw saeck by Valerius

Italy’s Il Ballo di Mantova by Ferrini

England’s ‘An Italian Rant’ by Playford

Belgium’s Ik zag Cecilia komen

France’s/Scotland’s My Mistress is Prettie by Mouton

Belgium’s Ah! vous dirai-je, maman

Central Germany’s ‘Burlesque’, formerly attributed to Leopold Mozart

Mozart’s Variations on Ah! vous dirai-je, maman

Sweden’s Värmlandsvisan by Fryxell

England’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’

Russia’s ‘Old French Song’ by Tchaikovsky

America’s ‘Alphabet Song’

Czechia’s Vltava (‘The Moldau’) by Smetana

England’s ‘Baa, Baa Black Sheep’

Romania’s Carul cu boi

Germany’s children’s song about ducks, Alle meine Entchen

Italy’s Brilla, Brilla La Stellina

America’s ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore’

America’s ‘Kumbaya’

Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’

Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I Used to Know’

Watch for more!

Part II of our series sets foot in 17th-century Italy and explores four composed versions found there.

Discover the 17th-century Renaissance-to-Baroque Italian versions of one of the world’s most-loved melodies, complete with music samples. Here’s the next chapter of the story as we know it. This music holds clues to the exact Italian versions that influenced contemporary spread across the European continent. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part II: Then there was a madrigal in Italy [Printables]

Musicians carried the Italian variant far afield when they travelled Europe for employment. Here is a collection of next generation variants from 17th-century Europe. These early international adopters launched a cascade effect of countless iterations of the tune throughout Europe for centuries to come. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part III: Next generation spread throughout 17th-c Europe [Printables]

As the original tune began to transform in folk circles, which features were kept and which were lost? And where in Europe did the original minor tune first become major and begin its transformation into the Twinkle tune we all know? It’s all explored in this post! Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part IV: From minor it branches into the major key [Printables]

Discover the transformation from the original florid melody to the simple tune of France’s Ah! vous dirai-je, maman and composers’ variations on it, beginning with Mozart. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part V: Mozart, a French folk song and beyond [Printables]

In several countries this tune was adopted as a national theme. Compare the versions that emerged. Which features of the original music were retained and how did the music change as it travelled? Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part VI: Twinkle as 19th-c national songs in countries far and wide [Printables]

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star became a source of inspiration of master composers, who borrowed it into their major works. Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Dohnányi and more all fell under its spell. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part VII: Twinkle is borrowed by master composers [Printables] Coming soon!

In time, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star emerged from earlier folk settings and continued to be borrowed into beloved children’s songs in an ever-expanding tradition of folk music. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part VIII: A folk tune becomes children’s songs in many languages [Printables] Coming soon!

Even popular musicians have come under the influence of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and have woven its tune into their melodies. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Part IX: Twinkle is borrowed into popular songs [Printables] Coming soon!

---

Don’t miss a post!

Follow my blog (click here)! Get instant notifications of my posts in your inbox!

I appreciate shares, comments and likes. Happy teaching! ❤

Video of the Week

North Star. (Intermediate piano, Level 4) Based on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, North Star (eSheet) features fifths, rhythmic patterns with sixteenth notes, legato pedal and lots of moments for developing long, expressive phrases. North Star is available as an eSheet!