Reading Rhythms Fluently

A game for your repertoire

Continuing our series on reading music fluently on the fiddle/violin, we'll now move on to an essential skill in reading: Rhythms.

If you haven't tried the previous reading games/exercises, give your muscle memory and eyes a chance to do each of them — Open Strings, Space Notes, Line Notes, and All Notes. These are games — in other words, you never accomplish or learn them, you just play them, get to know what is going on in them, and do them better each time. Your brain may try to convince you that it already knows or at least “understands” everything because some aspects of these games are easy. But other aspects are more interconnected, less verbal, and very beneficial. Here are some reasons why --

1) These games help you read fluently without thinking about names of notes or layering in any other verbal translation;

2) They serve as great warmups for your bow as you maintain steady timing and get a good sound in every part of the bow, especially at the moment of changing direction. Optionally you can also practice using the entire bow efficiently as well -- and all this is done without once letting your eyes leave the written page, requiring you to trust your bow arm muscle memory to play the correct strings;

3) They give you a chance to push yourself toward seeing whole patterns at once, such as seeing all four notes in a bar as a patterned group, instead of looking at one note at a time; and

4) They help you soak in the idea that space notes use even-numbered fingers (0,2,4) and line notes use the odd (1,3).

You don’t have to imagine you’ve “mastered” any of those games/exericese before moving on, as long as you go back and keep making use of the previous games (and don’t let your mind moan that they’re too “easy” for you, or for anyone!).

Below is my next sheet in the series of Reading Games/Exercises. You can continue building on your awareness of where the strings are on the staff, and how to play space and line notes, but now we’ll focus on seeing rhythms.

At the top of the sheet is again a visual reminder of where the open strings are. Next to them are four measures/bars of music in 4/4 time, meaning that each bar contains the equivalent of 4 quarter notes (“crotchets” in the U.K.), which are the filled-in circles, each with its own stem. We’ve been using these in all the previous exercises.

Notice that there are four vertical arrows above each measure in these sample bars and in four of the lines of music below. Each arrow marks one of the four beats in the measure. These arrows, or beats, are what all the rhythms on this page are built upon.

In the sample measures, the first measure is a whole note (semibreve in the UK), which lasts all four beats. The second measure shows two half notes (minims in the UK). Each of these gets two beats/two arrows. The third measure has four quarter notes (crotchets), each of which lasts one beat/arrow. And the last measure demonstrates the look of 8 eighth notes (quavers). Two of these fit into each beat.

Below that in a small box are two examples of how we use a dot added to any note to make it last 50% longer. A dotted half note is a single note that lasts as long as a half note plus a quarter note, or you can think of it as 1-1/2 half notes. A dotted quarter note lasts 1-1/2 quarters, or a quarter + an eighth, as shown. These dotted notes are used only twice on the page, but the truth is, we don’t really count them. We play the dotted note, and then fit the following short note in before playing the next beat note on time. These dotted notes often are held through a beat, and cause a lot people trouble with rhythms. For more info on this read the article “The Beat Not Played.” https://epearlman.substack.com/p/the-beat-not-played

Now, to body of the exercise/game! It’s always good to focus on one thing at a time. Here, we start with open string notes first, so there’s little worry about getting the right note. The point is to get the rhythms.

Pay attention to the arrows, the beats, and not just visually. Feel them in your body, somewhere, anywhere. Marching in place can be great because you clearly feel the beat coming and contact the floor when it arrives. That beats swaying — where exactly is the beat when you sway? But you can also tap your toe or your heel, and note that a big part of feeling the beat is knowing when it’s coming — the lifting of the foot, or the inhale of the breath. Some ensembles know to start a piece of music together by just having the leader inhale in time.

In most tunes, I recommend a basic bowing that places a downbow on the first beat of each measure. Not here. Sometimes it’s down, sometimes up, but you know when beat 1 is coming and have to change bow direction right on beat 1, no matter how well or badly you might have done in the previous measure (music is an appointment calendar, not a to-do list!).

Match the start of each note with the arrows above. If it’s a half note there will be an arrow to start and an arrow in the middle of that note before you play the next note. If you play eighth notes, you start with the arrow and have to fit another one in before playing the following beat. Just stick with the arrows. Guess on the notes/strings. Your bow and timing are completely in charge — in all music, but especially here where the entire point is to get the rhythms right.

The first line uses only one string, with total focus on rhythms. The second line adds the need to choose which string you’re playing.

Once that feels okay, the next three lines ask you to add the 2d finger notes, so you are playing all the space notes. The last measure in each line is a single, not double, bar, so you need to see the last measure all at once and move your eyes along to the next line in order to continue playing on the next line without any pause. The second and third lines no longer show the arrows but those four beats per bar should be in your body.

After getting used to the space notes, the line notes use the same kind of note patterns, except with only the 1st and 3d fingers.

Take your time, get a good sound, keep your eyes on the measures. If your timing blows up, stop, and start on beat 1 of a nearby measure, and keep going. Do it better the next time! In fact, I always recommend playing terribly the first time so you feel great playing better the second time! :)

Allow yourself to absorb all this information by doing it, at some point every day if possible. Once again, don’t succumb to imagining this is easy or obvious etc etc. The goal is to see and play without thinking, and you can do this by doing rather than by overthinking. Besides, as you can see in the four numbered points above, there are lots of other side benefits!

Reading Exercise: Rhythms —