Reading Music Fluently

A different take on reading, for all levels and music teachers

This and the next couple of posts are for all levels of string player, and music teachers as well. It will help beginners or anyone who hasn’t learned to read music fluently, and offers new takes on how to think about reading, and (esp. next time) about note patterns such as arpeggios.

I don’t teach the reading of music as if teaching the reading of words; unfortunately, it’s traditionally taught that way — with letters and memorization. This is not actually how musicians read music. We read by seeing patterns and relationships, not by identifying the names of notes — which we can certainly do when necessary, but most of the time it ain’t necessary. It only gums up the works to verbalize things that don’t need verbalizing.

I will speak here of the violin/fiddle, but the ideas apply to other stringed instruments, and if you sing or play a different kind of instrument, you may find a way to apply the ideas below, especially about note patterns, to your situation.

If you already read okay, or well, see #7 below.

Step One: Absorbing Note Locations

On the violin, all open strings are space notes — dots or circles written on the space between two lines, or above the top line or below the bottom line, of the 5-line music staff.

Although you don’t have to be memorizing the name of every note (and this is one reason my Finger Finder uses finger numbers and relationships rather than note names), it is very important to know the names of the four strings — G, D, A, E. You need this for tuning and for communicating with other players.

Other note names are quickly and easily figured out in relationship to these open strings, because musical notes are alphabetical: A to G, then starting again with A. It’s easy to know the name of a note that’s one up or down from an open string, assuming you know the alphabet, and the only other note to get is the one that’s two up or down from an open string. If you know the names of the open strings, figuring out the name of another note on demand may take an extra half-second! No worries. (Accidentals are a different concern altogether, having to do with note relationships of scales, and are also easy to understand, unless you try to memorize everything out of context.)

For beginners, or for those who have never learned to read, I start with the open strings, showing them that they are all space notes, and are pretty far apart from each other:

Basically, the G is below the staff, the D at the bottom, the A in the middle, the E at the top.

For teaching, I use an exercise page I made long ago — the copyright says 1992 — and I offer it below to paid subscribers, but you can write your own if you like. The idea is to experiment with playing an open string and then seeing if it repeats itself or if it asks you to play a higher or lower string. You know that there are only four choices, so you can’t go far wrong!

I recommend people using this reading game/exercise in the following ways. (I call these exercises “games” because exercises are often seen as tedious, required and repetitive, whereas games are entertaining because you’re not trying to be perfect — you’re just trying to play them better each time, and as you get familiar with a game, you play it better. It then becomes fun to see how well you might play it this time vs last time.)

1. Keep your eyes on the written notes, for several reasons: a) so that you absorb the information there as you play; b) so that you don’t lose your place; and c) so that you learn to trust your bow hand and ears to find the string without imagining that your eyes can help (they can’t — your eyes are farther apart than the strings and you’d go crosseyed trying to watch the bow!).

2. My exercise is written in quarter notes — the filled in black circles with a stem — in other words, all the notes are equal in time. That’s all you need to know about note values for now. Choose how fast to go and stick with it. I recommend one note per second, using about a half bow for each, starting each note in a different bow direction.

3. Keep the bow moving at all times, without any hesitation. If you play one second per note, change your bow every second, regardless of whether you think you know what the next note is. Keep in time. My page has four groups of four notes on each of four lines — that means that once you begin reading, you should finish in 64 seconds if you play one note per bow per second! Never mind if you miss a note here and there, try to keep going, unless you get all flummoxed or look away and lose your place — then just play the game again. Take one or two minutes to read this page every day for a week and you’ll have it down.

4. There are only four choices of notes: the four open strings. If you go for a wrong string, you’ll soon run out of strings! Then just play the game again and do better. Don’t try to identify any note before you play it, that’s useless verbalizing that will mess up your timing. If you get screwed up or confused, try again, but don’t attempt to fix anything.

5. Visualize a measure at a time — my open strings page below has four quarter notes in each bar, or measure, marked with the vertical line. All this means is that the notes are arranged in groups of four. See if you can see the pattern of all four at once, rather than identify and play one note at a time. Music is never about individual notes; it’s about groups of notes within beats and measures. You may want to visualize the group of four — sometimes they look like steps going up or down, or like a sawtooth pattern, or like climbing a hill or sliding down one.

6. On my page, I use the bowing symbols for downbow (pushing bow away from you) and upbow (pulling it toward you). This is another thing that you absorb as you keep your eyes on the notes and play. You’ll notice that every measure starts with a downbow, because there is an even number of notes/bows in each measure (between the vertical bar lines). If you find yourself starting a measure upbow, you know you added or missed a note (or tried to go back and fix a “mistake”). In this case, stop. Start again on a nearby measure with a downbow.

7. Advanced use for the same page: When you get comfortable with this open strings page, or if you already know how to read, use it as a chance to play for a full minute with a really good, steady sound, with good timing, and smooth bow changes. By keeping your eyes on the notes, which will not be a challenge for you anymore, you can always challenge yourself to listen to your quality of sound and to keep your bow hand steady, calm, and in control. See the written note patterns in groups of four.

Time signature, note values (U.S. & U.K.)

You may notice that my page has a line at the top right explaining the time signature and the various note values from whole note to eighth note. You don’t need to know this in order to do the game/exercise; you just might find it helpful if you are curious. By the way, the note names are different in the U.K., where a whole note = a semibreve; half note = minim; quarter note = crotchet; and eighth note = quaver.

See below for my Open Strings Game page!

(For paid or trial subscribers.)

Next time, I’ll talk about adding the other space notes, and transferring this visual knowledge to playing the line notes. We’ll also talk about how this way of reading helps us visualize/read/think about chords and arpeggios.