Beginner cellists, Free Sheet Music, Pop Music
First published on Jun 21, 2026 by Seb
Last updated on Jun 21, 2026 by Seb
Yesterday, written by Paul McCartney in a dream, is arguably one of the greatest songs ever written. It has been an earworm in the recomposer’s head for as long as he can remember. This piece has been waiting in the queue for the bachwrotewhat treatment since before the project’s inception. In retrospect, it probably should have been the very first bachwrotewhat recomposition, given its lyrics lamenting the protagonist’s loss of a companion. Here we present: Yesterday, as rewritten for a single cello without accompaniment.
The recomposer has transposed the piece from its original key of F major to E-flat major to better exploit the cello’s range and open strings. Yesterday’s opening phrase is commonly harmonized as F–Em7–A7–Dm. In E-flat major, this becomes Eb–Dm7–G7–Cm, allowing the cello’s open D, G, and C strings to help shape the contour and resonance of the melody.
The recomposer has also taken liberties in a few places, including ending the piece in the relative key of C minor, a choice McCartney would probably approve of, given his fondness for D-minor-based harmonic progressions throughout this music.
Find below sheet music, with annotations by the recomposer on his own approach to playing this piece as an amateur cellist himself. Notes are slurred with suggested bowings. The recomposer also marked fingering positions suitable for an intermediate cellist. But you can, and probably should make your own annotations. Clean sheets with just notes are found further down this post. Following are PNG and PDF versions with annotations.
If you are an advanced cellists, you will want to figure out your own slurrings, bowings and fingerings. Find below clean sheets with only notes. Feel free to further revise this recomposition. Both PNG and PDF versions are available.
If you plan to improve on this music, start with Musescore files which you can further edit in the free Musescore app. But since you can’t download most Musescore files on the commercial Musescore’s website unless you are a paid user, we store .mscz files on this site whenever we can, so you can freely download them here. They are saved here as .zip files because WordPress does not accept .mscz files. Just download them and unzip:
This recomposition itself is made available for all to play under a Creative Commons license, specifically the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
You may also consult IMSLP’s excellent discourse on how Creative Commons licenses apply to work of music and derivative work such as recordings of a composition. In short, you can freely use, share, perform and record this work, so long as you credit the composer, and continue to share you derivative work under the same CC BY-SA license, even if you do it for profit.
Leave a Reply