Reading All the Space Notes

Patterns and chords with even-numbered fingers

Last time, in “Reading Music Fluently,” we got started with a new take on learning to read fluently, specially geared toward stringed instruments. We saw that all the open strings are written on the spaces between the lines of the musical staff. Roughly speaking, the G is below the staff, the D at the bottom, the A in the middle, the E at the top.

Secret warmup

The reading game from last time? With only open strings on the page? Think of it as a secret warmup exercise for your bowing, sound, and timing. If you only think of it as a “beginner” exercise for reading open string notes, you’re missing a big part of the point of it all. Remember, while doing these reading games, there’s a whole lot you can pay attention to and benefit from, and the same is going to be true of today’s games below — be sure to:

• Keep your eyes on the music staff (never glance at your bow or fiddle!) in order to keep your place, trust your hands and ears, and absorb as much visual info as you can in connection to the sound and feel of playing those notes;

• Use a generous half-bow on each note;

• Start each measure (first note after each vertical bar line) with a downbow (as explained last time);

• Get a good sound in every part of the bow;

• Use a straight bow by opening your elbow and pushing for the downbow and pulling your wrist toward your nose for the upbow;

• Use about 4 seconds for each measure (one second per note/bow). Never go back to fix a “mistake,” just keep your bow going on time. Get the next note better, not the previous one!

• Aim to see all four notes of each measure at once, as a pattern that you could even graph or draw in your mind, rather than trying to think of each note as you play it;

• Never delay a bow or a beat just because of an overly verbal mind that wants to be “sure” of a note, or even a control-freak mind that insists on being in “control” of everything you play! If you’re not sure of a note, guess! But meanwhile, stick with your steady bowing, good sound and good beat (and sorry if I repeat myself, but it’s important!). Always look ahead, not back.

Inside that list are about a dozen things for you to think of and make automatic, and they’re best done on a simpler task (like open strings), not on a complicated one. Try improving all those thngs while reading the open strings game page. And come back to it periodically. Don’t ever start thinking you “should” be “past” or “better than” an exercise. That’s why I call them “games” — you can always play them better. Your ultimate goal is to teach your muscle memory to take care of all the details for you, and in reading, you want your eyes to absorb where on the staff the open strings are written, so you can see them and play them fluently, i.e. without thinking.

Even numbers

By the time you get more or less comfortable with the open strings, you’ll have absorbed where open strings are on the music staff, as well as the look of bar lines with four quarter notes between them carving up the time of each measure into four equal notes. And in the process, your bowing control, timing and sound will improve.

Then you can add the next step. Notice I didn’t say “replace” the first step, just “add” to it a new idea, a new layer.

Have you noticed that open strings are written on every other space of the music staff? Well, the space notes in between the open string notes are all played with the 2d finger. So all space notes are played with even-numbered fingers (on violins and violas; cellos have their own rules).

Now add the 2d-finger notes to your practice of reading open strings. My exercise for doing this limits your choice of notes to only three possibilities — bottom, middle, and top. Using just two strings, the “bottom” note is an open string; the “top” note is the next open string up; the “middle” note is the 2d finger on the lower string.

Chords

These three notes are called a chord. If you start with open D (bottom), then play 2 fingers on the D (middle), and then the open A (top), you’ve just outlined what we hear as a D chord. (Never mind major or minor, that’s determined by the middle note being higher or lower, no big deal right now.) The same pattern starting on the open G is a G chord; starting on open A, it’s an A chord. Congrats, you now understand music theory!

Below is what those three chords look like, written as all space notes on the staff. Plus, I’ve add the E chord using 0, 2, 4 (all even numbers), all on the E strings. We have to use the 4th finger simply because we don’t have a higher open string for the top note. (The D, A, and E open strings can also be played using a 4th finger on the next lower string, so you could use 0, 2, 4 on any string instead of 0, 2, 0 for bottom, middle and top notes.)

Note: for these reading games, do not fret about intonation. One thing at a time! Here we want to get used to which finger or open string automatically matches with which written space note. Playing in tune is a separate concept, as is major vs minor scales and chords.

Reading Game: All Space Notes

Using these ideas, you can write out a reading game for practicing all the space notes. Below, I provide my own reading exercise (again, to be fair to paying fiddle students, this is only available to paid subscribers — by the way, this is a great time to join if you haven’t already!).

My own exercise sheet uses various patterns, limited to the three different notes on each line, all of the notes using even-numbered fingers (or open string), with four quarter notes in each measure. Again I recommend four seconds per measure, just as with the open strings exercise.

In case you didn’t notice last time, the open strings game has only one double bar, at the end of the page, which means you’re expected to keep time and jump from the end of one line right to the next line and keep going through the whole page without stopping. If you do play 1 second per note, you’ll reach the end in 64 seconds. Now that’s a good game to try!

For today’s exercise, as included below, there’s a double bar at the end of each line, meaning that each line is its own exercise/game. On each line, you only have to see bottom, middle, and top. This helps you absorb where these notes are and what their visual relationships look like on paper as you play and hear them. Use the dozen or so ideas listed at the top of this post to enrich the game. Be sure you can see a whole measure of four notes at once and notice their visual pattern, rather than tunnel-vision only on the note you’re playing at the moment.

Again, never delay a note to let your mind take full control. Guess! Trust yourself! There are only 3 choices! How wrong can you be? :) If you do get messed up, stop and try again from the first note of a nearby measure, always starting downbow.

Take some time to get comfortable with this one. When you become aware of these 3-note chords of even-numbered fingers, you notice them everywhere in music, in varying orders — sometimes bottom-top-middle-top (Mozart liked that one), or middle-bottom-top-bottom, and so on. Thinking in a pattern like that tremendously simplifies your job of learning, understanding and remembering tunes.

Below is the page I use to move students from open strings to all-space notes. As you’ll see, there are double bars at the end of each line, so there are 5 separate exercises here. At the top of the page, I lay out all the notes we’re dealing with and which strings they’re on. Then each line focuses only on 3 notes, to get the reader very comfortable with the patterns of 4 quarter notes in each measure just like with the open strings, but this time seeing only the bottom, middle and top choices for each exercise. One used only G chord notes, one D chord notes, one A, one E. The last one presents all the notes, asking the reader, once they’re comfortable with the other lines, to follow their nose and trust their experience with open strings and all space notes, to just read on through, following the notes as they go along exploring space notes on all the strings. It all becomes automatic and fluent surprisingly quickly. This is the type of fluency in reading that needs no verbalizing or thinking or trying to control everything before playing.

See below for Reading Game: Space Notes