(Scroll down all the way for the sheet music.)

This fun Purim song by Sruli Broncher is also featured on the It Sounds Like Purim album by Benny Friedman.

I could not find the lyrics for this song anywhere, so there is no chord sheet.

It seemed to me that this might be the perfect opportunity to offer a tutorial instead:

How to Play Chords from a Lead Sheet if you don’t have a Chord Sheet

Let’s begin with this sample sheet music (it’s the lead sheet to Adeloyada):

The chords are circled in yellow. But instead of having the lyrics to guide you, there are a bunch of notes you don’t know how to read. Let’s see how the other circled and labeled items can help us know when to play the chords.

The time signature (circled in blue) tells us how many beats are in each measure. In this song, there are going to be 4 beats in each measure (that’s the number on the top).

The vertical lines, circled in orange and green, are called bar lines. A measure is the space between 2 bar lines. Between each set of bar lines is a measure, and that measure takes up 4 beats.

What that means is that if there is one chord for the measure, you will play that chord for 4 beats (at least, in this song). If a chord repeated for more than one measure, you’d play another 4 beats for each additional measure until you came to another chord.

The green bar lines are begin repeat and end repeat bar lines. That means that you repeat the section between the begin repeat and the end repeat. In other words, play that part twice. The first time you play the first ending and the second time around you play the second ending (labeled in gray).

How might this look in real life?

Imagine you play the guitar, and you are using a strum pattern “down up, down, down up, down up” (⬇️⬆️⬇️ ⬇️⬆️⬇️⬆️) that is meant to fill 4 beats. You would play the entire pattern once for each measure of the song, using the chord that is on top of that measure (or the previous chord, if that measure doesn’t have a chord).

You can use any pattern you like, I was just offering this as an example.🙂

If you want to keep things simple (ie you don’t know any patterns or find them confusing), you can just play the chord once on the first beat of each measure.

This method applies to any instrument on which you play chords.

Happy playing and happy Purim!

Download Sheet Music for Adeloyada