Quick Start Guide to Reading Music

Gosh, are we live now? Tell me if you can hear me. Thanks for letting me know, Wayne, that my sound was off. So, I I thought I clicked go live, but I guess I didn't click it right. Assure me that I'm live. Can you comment, Wayne, or text me? Hello. Hello. Hello. Yes. Okay. Oh my gosh.

So, I just delivered the first seven minutes of my my live stream and it was brilliant. So, okay. So, I'll give you the speed version of what I just discussed. I can condense it down into two minutes. So, we were talking about by ear versus by note reading. And which is more important? And you got you guessed it. It in in Wayne's case, what's most important is what you know the least of. So if you're an awesome note reader, you need to learn to play by ear. If you're an awesome by ear player, you need to learn to read music. And as Kenya said, they're equally important. You just really need both. If you don't have both, you're hopping around on one leg when you could have two. not to be ablelist against people who only have one leg, but you get my meaning.

Okay. Um I was saying I can't make my image bigger right now. You're just going to have to look at the rhythm pyramid until we get to the rhythm pyramid. I'll I'll um describe that once we get there. So yeah, both are equally important. You need both. And both can be a pain in the butt to work on because it's tedious and both of them make you feel kind of like a loser at first cuz we suck at it at first. You got to keep at it and you'll see returns coming back to you within one week. You will see improvements.

Um, so I've seen really good note readers who are pretty good and fluent at reading music who don't know how to play by ear at all. And if this is you, I beg of you to train your ears and force yourself to learn to play some songs by ear. That requires time and it requires some ear training, which is another topic. There are apps you can download to train your ears. There's a lot of resources. In fact, I have a course called EarTraining at red desertviolin.com. So, you can go to that. But there's lots of free resources on the internet. I beg of you to supplement your note reading with some ear training.

Those of you who only play by ear and don't know how to read music, it's probably because note reading is this big mystery. It looks like a code. It's all these dots and dashes and beams and bars. It's it's a very efficient code and it's very logical and it makes sense really quickly once you have the basics which I'm going to give you today. By the way, I have a course called learn to read music and it's geared it's structured just for violin and fiddle. It doesn't bother with bass clef or any other instruments. It's just for our instrument and it will have you fluent in reading music in three months. I think if you go slower then it'll take longer but you just have to make effort every single day and you will become fluent.

All right, Rita took me time to get connected but now I'm here. Good. Good to see you Rita. Good to see you Wayne and Kenya. It's just us. So you guys, there's a small group here today. If you have questions, just I can see the chat very easily, so fire away if you've got questions or if you have input and feedback.

Um, so Wayne, I'm going to put Wayne on the spot a lot today because Wayne was very much a by- ear player. He has awesome ears. In fact, after hearing a song three times, he's got 90% of it and can play it back. And we hate people like that, don't we? But he real recognized the value of reading music because first and foremost it archives your memory. If you're only a by ear player, the only songs you're able to play are the songs you can remember and that becomes a full-time job after a while maintaining your repertoire. So reading music, one of the biggest benefits is it's it's a way of archiving the the songs we we know. The other big benefit is you can access the entire universe of music like that. And the internet is a whole universe of music. You've got Musecore, you've got IMSLP, you've got a thousand free sheet music sites. There's not a song in the world that you can't learn by downloading it really quick or by learning it by ear. Let's not neglect that other half of our abilities.

Um, at first reading music feels like a step backwards because if you can learn a song really fast by ear, why do you need to take three months to learn how to read music so you can learn songs? It's a pain in the butt and it feels like a detour. Same with the opposite people who can read sheet music but don't have trained ears. It feels like just a detour and an unnecessary hassle to stop and train your ears, but I assure you that both are necessary and both can be done as an adult.

So, Kenya, is there a trick to not getting confused when switching back and forth between alto and treble cliffs? Um, you know, no, I don't know of a shortcut between that. The trick is once you're fluent in both, it will be like speaking two languages. And a fluent speaker in Spanish and English doesn't have to think I'm speaking English right now or I'm speaking Spanish right now. They just speak it. So the only trick is greater fluency in both. I read Eltocliff for a little while. I was faking it as a viola player so I could get get wedding gigs. And I had to translate the viola cleft, that's the alto clefated to treble cleft. And it's down a string and in third position. If you think those two things, then you can think treble cleft and you're playing the correct notes. But it's um or up a string, I think. See, I I haven't done it for a long time. You don't want to have to do that. You want to just be fluent. So I don't have a I don't have a great shortcut for that.

Kenya you um so I was saying you need both ear ear training people need note reading note reading people need ear training and we were discussing the benefits of note reading. I listed some but I I know another benefit that I bet that most of you have not thought of yet and that is Oh hey Jamie. Good to see you. You haven't you've missed just the introductory stuff. Not we haven't gotten into the nuts and bolts yet. The thing you might not have thought of of the benefit of reading music is that you can communicate fingerings and beings through sheet music. That's very hard to communicate by ear or by tablete frankly.

Um, and also the benefit of reading sheet music is in the long run, once you're fluent, you learn songs much faster, even faster than Wayne learns songs by ear. So, I'm not sure, Wayne, how long you've been working on reading music, but you started from zero, and you're well on your way to fluent. You're still going, you still read slow, but you're doing it accurately, and you miss very few notes. Now I think you've been working on note reading less than 3 months or around 3 months. You can correct me in the comments.

So let me just briefly discuss the barriers to reading sheet music. The barriers is the number one for adults is impatience. Like I said at first it slows us way down. We're reading so slow and we know that we can do it faster by ear, but you have to have faith that when you get better, it's going to pay big dividends because it will. So, impatience.

Um, I think note reading for a lot of people is terrifying and it feels like this big mystery like we're not going to be smart enough and then it'll be revealed that we're we don't have the intellect. Not true. I guarantee you it's it's a very logical, very simple, very efficient system note reading. It's another form of tablete. But tabletechure has its limits. For one thing, there's no universal tablete. For another thing, tablete can't convey half the information that actual sheet music can.

So, Wayne working on reading. Oh, maybe a year or so. Slowly at first. Yeah. You started dabbling about a year ago. Very honest answer. Yeah. But you've been going at it hard for 3 months or so. And maybe maybe time's just flown for me. Yeah. And he's liking reading much more now that he's getting better at it. With everything, I don't like to do things that I'm bad at. It's not fun to suck. But as you get better and better, you start having more fun. And it's it's its own built-in reward.

Um, yeah. So, that's the barriers and the benefits of learning to read sheet music. Now, let's get into the nuts and bolts of how how do you learn to read sheet music? First of all, you sign up for my course, Learn to Read Music. If you don't, listen carefully to this nutshell technique on how to read music.

Um, let me get to my this. Okay. So, first thing I would recommend is that you treat rhythm separately from pitches and work on those two disciplines separately at first and then after you're good at both of those, combine them into notes and rhythm. So, let's talk about notes first, you know. At first, you're not going to I recommend you don't worry about sharps and flats and naturals at first. Just learn where on this music staff. This is a music staff here. Where are the open strings? Learn to recognize where what notes are first finger, second finger, third finger, and fourth finger. Don't worry about if it's a sharp or a flat. just just know what finger or what open string it correlates to. So you have less to worry about. Let me show you the open strings. And oh, I forgot to say when you're learning to read music, you're going to recognize very quickly. Open strings are all on spaces. I'll show you what that means in a second. First finger notes are all on lines. Second finger notes are on spaces. Third finger notes are on lines. Fourth finger notes are on spaces. And they're also the same as an open string. So fourth finger and open string are interchangeable. And you'll start feeling you'll you'll start figuring this out on your own. So these are your line notes one and three. These are your space notes two and four and open strings. Oh, I love that. Sarah, she's learning to read notes by writing them down on blank sheet music. Brilliant. That's actually benefits you in in indirect ways as well.

So, let's show you where the open strings are. Can you see that note right there? That is your open G. Recognize that and you'll know that notes that happen above that note are on the G string until until you get to that note because that space just below the bottom line that's your open D. And I loved Wayne called those the floors or the ceilings because once you pass through a floor or a ceiling, you're on another string. And so they're like a boundary line. I loved that concept. This space here is your open A and this space here is your open E. Let me get rid of the cursor. So those are your boundaries. And um what else do I want to say? And they're all on spaces. Okay. So, I'd memorize those. That way you know where your open strings are for sure. Let me show you where your first finger notes are. Your first finger notes. Actually, let me put them next to the open strings. That might work out very nicely. So, let me finish here. Feel free to post in the comments. I'll check in a second. what the comments are. Okay. So, that's open G. That's first finger on G. The note is A. That's open D. That's first finger on D. That note is E. This is open A and B. Open E and F. First fingers. Let me show you where the second fingers are. They're on spaces. As I told you, two and four are on spaces and so are open strings. There, those notes I just added are your second fingers on each string. Second finger on G, second finger on D, A, and E. And the notes go in order of the alphabet. So this is G and then we start over with A B. The next note up would be C. This is D E F. This is A B C. This is E F G. So you can see it's really helpful if you know your open strings and if you know your alphabet then you can figure out the notes until you just know them just like this is dusty blue. You'll just know the notes instantaneously. Okay. So that's second fingers. Let me show you the third fingers. Three. That's a C. This is G. This is three on A, which is D. and three on E, which that note is A. The Wayne says that notes on lines are 1 F and 3F and notes. Uhoh, he retracted. Okay, you'll think that through a little bit. So, those are your basics, you guys. All four strings all the way up. And I should add one more because I want to use all four fingers on all four strings. This is fourth finger on your E string. It's on a space and it's B, letter B. Okay. So, that's first. Just learn your open strings and recognize that these two fingers get the line notes. These two fingers get the space notes. All right. Um, and that's your notes. And then you drill it either by using a paid course like mine or a cell phone app or there's online sites dedicated to site reading and they'll flash a note and you have to play it and that teaches you really quick recognition as well. So, and like I said, that's the basics. We're not worried. We're not worried if we're playing low one or normal one or low two or high two. We're just recognizing the notes and what finger they are on what string. Okay, that eliminates your your brain stress at first.

So, I think we're going to talk about rhythm next because that's a fun topic. Trying to check. Okay, let's see if we can make sense of Wayne's comment that notes on lines are 1 F and 3F and notes on spaces are open and 2F. Well, I don't know what you mean by 3 F, Wayne. Um, this is one. He's saying this is one F right here because that's first finger on the E and this is a 2F because it would be second finger on the D string. I don't see a 3F. I think that's a typo. Yeah, but that is useful, Wayne. Yes.

Okay. So, let me introduce you now to the rhythm pyramid. And first I want to show you the one without colors. So, when you're learning how to play rhythms, um, you're going to clap a lot of rhythms. Let me move this over there. I want you to do lots of clapping without the violin at first. That removes that removes the difficulty of the instrument. And the first thing you need to do when you're learning rhythms, I don't know if you can see my face or not. Let me know if you can see my face because it would be disrupting if you couldn't um the first thing you need to know is the basic note values. Okay, so this this football shaping shaped eggshaped thing that's a whole note. You need to memorize that. It's worth four beats. It's worth beat one, beat two, beat three, and beat four labeled up here at the top. And then this little egg with a stem on it, but it's still hollow is called a half note. It's worth two beats. One, two. And then another half note kicks in and takes up beat three and beat four. When you have the the colored in note with a stem like this, that's called a quarter note. And it's worth one beat. 1 2 3 4. Okay. And those are I consider quarter notes like ground level. Anything above a quarter note is like the upstairs of rhythm. It's it's bigger note values than a quarter note. Anything below the quarter note is uh the downstairs and it's smaller note values. So let's talk about those and it's just mathematical. So the next value down from a quarter note is an eighth note. And if you think of fractions, one quarter and 1/8, 1/8 is half the value of a quarter. So an eighth note is half the value of a quarter note. It takes two eighth notes to equal one quarter note. 16th notes, it takes four 16th notes to equal one quarter note. It takes two 16th notes to equal an eighth note. Oh, sorry. I'm not I'm not I thought I was pointing, but I was pointing on my software. Sorry. So, these are the eighth notes right here. And it takes two eighth notes to equal a quarter note. It takes four 16th notes to equal a quarter note. Or it takes two 16th notes to equal an eighth note. Now down here you've got, let me show you something. So quarter notes have no beam. Eighth notes, you see this top thing that the line that connects those guys? That's called a beam. Eighth notes only have one beam. 16th notes have two beams. That's how you can tell the difference between them. 32nds have three beams. 64th. You are you'll rarely see these guys, but they have four beams as is predictable. One, two, three, four. And you'll notice that there's a the top beam glues everyone together. That's just right here. That top beam that's serves to unify all let's see how many of 16 of these notes. It's telling you that those 16 notes equal one quarter note. You should already know that, but visually it's helpful to see that beam gluing them together by the quarter note by the the beat. Same thing is happening with 32nd notes. You've got this one beam unifying them. It would be really hard if the beams went all the way through. You wouldn't be able to see the notes as well. So that's just a visual aid for small small note values like 32nds and 64ths. After 64ths, it just goes on and on. It would be 1228th notes. But I've seen that once one time in 40 years of reading music. And so this is really the bottom of what you will ever need. But theoretically, it's possible to go further. It's possible to have a double whole node. So, it's possible to go higher upstairs, but very rare and not necessary to study.

Okay, let me check. No more comments. Okay, cool. So, we all good so far. I want to show you I I think Wayne, did you make this for me? This looks like a something Wayne would have done for me. He's so helpful. So this is the same as this rhythm pyramid. I I call it a pyramid you guys because I used to put the whole note in the middle and then it would come it would come down branch out with larger note values. Then I thought it you know it's much more useful to make the them line up by the beat. So beat one lines up with those notes there and show the vertical the vertical equivalent. Hey, look at that. that stayed. That's pretty cool. So, it didn't become it lost the pyramid shape, but I still call it the pyramid. It's showing the different levels of rhythm. Okay. So, Wayne's not taking credit for this. So, the colors show that the whole note is outside of any colors. The whole note just takes up the whole all four beats. It goes clear across like that. Okay? And then, oops. Then the half note is anything in the yellow box equals a half note. So this quarter note and that quarter note, if you mush them together, that equals a half note. From this eighth note to to this eighth note that equals a half note right there. Okay. Oops. And then same with 16th notes up to there is a half note. And then they, whoever did this did the same thing with the purple box, showing us what 1/8 eighth note in encompasses. 1/8 note equals 26th notes or 4 32nd notes or eight 64th notes. So if you like colors and you like seeing very much visual representations, I can actually send this to you. So, it's also included in learn to read music, I think. But just ask, email me, I'll send it to you if you find it helpful.

Now, what we would do, let me show you how you can work on rhythm. You can buy books, you can buy apps. Oops, that's someone's private lesson plan. Let me bring back Musecore. By the way, Musecore has free music software. Like, I'm I'm using Musecore right now. It's free. It's great and um very useful. I lost my train of thought. So, we're going to move on. I'm going to show you how to work on rhythm. So, let's say let's put a quarter note. Oops. I don't like Let's just do open A. It doesn't matter because we're not reading pitches. And then And then we'll switch to eighth notes. And it's really useful when you're clapping or or to to read these rhythms clapping first because it removes the difficulty of the violin. I already said that. But you're going to go 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. The next rhythm I clapped was eighth notes. You can keep counting the beats out loud. So 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. That's hard to do. We need something to do on those other eighth notes that aren't on the beat. And so the traditional conventional way of of keeping our mouth busy on the eighth notes is to say one and two and three and four and. So clap with me you guys. Let me see if this will play. Can this play? Yes, it can. Okay, let's play together. Let's clap together. Ready? Go. One 2 3 4 1. Ah, it's too fast. Um, yeah, I'm not going to mess with this. It's set to 120. 60 is a magic number or somewhere in the 60s. Let's do it one more time. Get ready to clap. Okay. And then we're going to say 1 2 3 4. When we get to the eighth notes, say 1 and 2 and 3 and four and. Okay? Cuz this is going to get harder in just a second. So do this with me. Ready? Go. 1 2 3 4. One and two and three and four. And that's not great. the the uh playback feature on Muse Score I'm not in love with. But um so you clap and I'll be the I'll be the cursor. Okay, here we go. Ready? Clap. 1 2 3 4 1 and 2 and 3 and four and. And the eighth notes should be exact ratios, exactly twice as fast as the quarter notes. I didn't do it perfectly just then because there's a delay. And you just get you just drill changing note values like Oops. Not that hard of a note value. My gosh. Let's add a quarter note. Let's add a quarter note. A here. We'll we'll do a little drill here. We'll add some half notes. And let's add a mixed a mixed bar. The more you change note values, the harder it gets. So, this is a tricky bar right here. Let's just take a So, one other good housekeeping thing about site reading is to look and scan before you attempt it. If you'll do that, it's a great habit and it'll save you on numerous occasions. Look for differences in notes. Look for tricky, sorry, differences in rhythms. Look for traps that are going to get you. The traps would be when there's the same note value and then someone stuck a different note value in the middle of the same note value to see if you've gotten complacent. So, look for for sneaky changes in rhythm. And then the other tricky thing, you guys, is when there's when you've jumped from like this floor of the rhythm pyramid clear down to a a note value that's way far away, that's extremely difficult. So, it's going to be hard to go from eighth notes and then hold the quarter note because you're going to want to keep clapping, but you'll train yourself not to. Okay, so let's clap and count these. When you see eighth notes, clap one and two and you you'll hear me doing it and that'll remind you. When you have notes that are above quarter notes, larger value, clasp your hands together, but bounce the beat. So that whole note would be one 2 3 4. That's very important because it gets the beat into your body. it it's just it trains you very well for when you're holding your instrument and playing. Okay, let's clap and count. We won't have a we won't have a pointer for this because muse scores sucks and I want to clap and count with you. So, we just have to agree to start. We're going to start right there on that note. One, two, ready, clap. 1 2 3 4. One and two and three and four and. One 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 and four. See how that worked? So, we won't continue to do this exercise together, but I just showed you some of the techniques of drilling rhythms with clapping and counting.

Um, and then eventually soon after you've pretty good at clapping and counting, I want you immediately to get your instruments and practice them with open strings. Most I think in my learn to read music, most of the notes are on open A. And so that's fine. That's written. This line here that we just clapped, those are all open A's. You can do it on any string you want, but it's written open A. So let's do open A. And let's play that line. You'll notice it's harder to count when your violin is up. It's and you're doing stuff. It almost makes me into an imbecile. I can't make my mouth work, but I'm going to try. If you can't do it, don't worry about it. You have to do it in your mind. And you're not the only one that it's hard for. It's hard for me. And it's very I mean, when you're playing in a band or in an orchestra, you can't count out loud anyway. They don't even want you tapping your foot. So, it's important that you have that pulse in your body silently and that you're counting in your head. Okay. The thing is the rhythm stuff can seem easy, but I This is Wayne, but I find that I need to be able to keep up with the rhythm with about 10% of my brain because I'm needing the rest for pitches. Yes. Yes. This is why you want to develop your rhythm practice separately from the pitches before you ever combine the two. And that's what my course, Learn to Read Music, does. You drill them separately first and then halfway through we go back to simple but you're reading pitch and rhythm like Wayne said. Then you have to have two channels that are both uh blending together. Let's play our open A on this line right here. Okay, if you have your instrument out, I hope you do. Join us. Here we go. I'm going to park my hand right here because I don't need it. One, two, open. A one 2 3 4 1 and two and three and four and. 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 and four. So that's an example of once you graduate from clapping, you start learning to rhythmize your bow arm on open strings. That gets you the next step closer to reading pitch and rhythm together.

All right. So, let me just talk about ways of working on note reading and how to improve it once you've got a tow hold. How do you get better at it? And then we're going to have time. It's it's 11:43. We've got 15 minutes left. If anyone has any questions, note reading um definitely, but if no one's asking questions and you need to ask about spiccato, then get your question in because we have time today.

Um so ways of improving your site reading. Let's say that you're good at um on you know where all the fingers go very rapidly. you you see a note, you can put the finger the right finger on the right string and you can clap and count rhythms or bow on open strings, let's say. So, the next step would be for you to start learning changing pitch with rhythm at the same time. You know what? I can't I can't address that because that's just another element of you start simple, you practice it, it gets more elaborate, you get better at it. So, let's say you've crossed all three of those stages in your music reading, but you're still very slow and you don't consider yourself confident or fluent. How do we get into the confident fluent realm? The way you do that is number one, find an appropriate level of site reading material. If you start looking around, you'll find something that you're like, "Oh, I'm really successful doing this." And the reason you'll be successful when you find the right kind of site reading is number one, because it's the right level for you. It's going to be on the It's not going to be your maximum playing level. It's going to be way easier than things you're already able to play. So, it's going to be on the simpler side so that you can read about 90% 85 90% of the notes correctly with only making 10% mistakes. Then you're you're you're in the right vein of what you need to be practicing reading. As you get better at that, you can get harder and harder stuff to even further sharpen your site reading skills. There are books you can buy um on site reading. I I don't remember the name of it, but they're they're organized by level. So, you can buy books that are dedicated to this stuff.

Those of you who are not familiar with the Portland collection, um and waltzes, let's see, where's my waltzes? I can't find my Waltz book right now, but Yes, here it is. Okay, so some of my favorite site reading material because it's pleasant and it's pretty easy once you've once you've done the basic reading like through my course or once you've learned notes and the rhythm and basic combining of pitches by the Waltz book. This is volume one. Yeah, the Waltz book volume one classic. Here's the other secret to note reading you guys is under is getting the right font. This is big fat font. It's friendly. It's not intimidating. If you get um sheet music font that's sketchy or not clear or small and crammed and crowded, you're going to perceive it as being harder. And it is harder for the eyes. It makes an enormous difference the font. And that's why I also like like you know you can get the waltz book but you're only going to be reading waltzes and so that's limiting because that's three four time which we haven't talked about. Um and you're so you're only practicing three four time you need practice in other meters. So the other classic is the Portland collection and just start with volume one. There's three volumes. Volume one is the classic and it also has big fat bubble notes that are friendly and easy to read and they're short songs. They're also simple melodies that you can kind of wrap your ear around as you're reading.

Um, okay. So, ways of improving your site reading. Keep in mind what notes are on spaces and what notes are on lines. These guys on lines, these guys on spaces. I start to forget that and my site reading goes down the tubes. Keep that in mind at all times. Yes, Wayne says he spends a lot of time reading little kid tunes, children's songs, Old McDonald, Mary had a little lamb. That's beneficial for a couple reasons. First of all, they're simple. and they use simple rhythms and not fast note changes. The other reason that's nice is ear verification. We know those tunes. They're familiar. If you hit a wrong note, you're going to know it because it won't sound like Mary had a little lamb. The only caveat or um con for that is you might start playing by ear and think you're reading, but you're not. So you have to you have to keep that separate and know if you're reading or not reading. But that verification of rhythm is sorry of um of pitch is very helpful when you know the melody on that same line. And we're now we're now talking about um how to improve your site reading. And Wayne has used this this technique a lot. He he thinks he's reading the right note, but he has no way of knowing if it's right or not. If he doesn't know the melody, so you can use things such as Musecore and pick out a simple melody out of Musecore. You'll have to learn how to use it on your own. I can't get into it here. You can download files, simple files, put them into your software, hit play, and the cursor shows you where you are, and it plays it back if you set it to play it back. And then you can hear if your note is agreeing with what Muse Score is playing out. And there are other softwares and um ways of of playing along with sheet music. So you get that verification of whether you're playing the right note or not. And frankly, you'll just get better and better at playing the right note so that you're you don't have as much doubt as you once had.

The Waltz book is expensive. Um I wonder where you're looking. the Waltz book. This one, it shouldn't be more than 12 or $15 and it's a pretty good collection. So, uh, Amazon has it, but also the the site that there's, you know what, I'll try to find the site where it's not more than 15 bucks. So, yeah. And that's not cheap, but it's your music library. And you you you didn't just gain a site reading book, you gained a a Waltz um archive. So, same with now, the Portland collection is expensive, but it's super fat and it's a whole what's the word I'm looking for? Anyway, it's a whole volume of great fiddle tunes. Um, Wolfart Opus 45 is a really good site reading too because it never leaves first position and that's free on imslp.org. You can download it for free. No, the the Waltz book uh is not out of print. It's very very popular. So, if you're seeing prices of 30 40 bucks, then it's you're at the wrong site. I'm answering Skylark's question.

Kenya says, "When she when they're reading and playing, you often lose your place. Any suggestions on how to stop doing that?" Um, so I don't know what your age is, Kenya, but when we get into the 50year-old plus eyes, it is an issue. um being able to track and so people have enlarged their music. I have one student who's almost legally blind. She's so blind. She bought a great big magnifier on a gooseeneck and she puts it in front of whatever sheet music she's reading, which makes what she's reading giant. Wayne has learned to put his music up on a TV screen that's huge. and he's even turned his TV screen sideways, so he's reading a piece of sheet music that's this big. So size can really help you to enlarge the size. The Muse score has a cursor that helps you to stay in track of where you are. So visually that can help you, but a lot of it is also training your eye at the end of one line to cleanly sweep to the next line. Um, yeah, a lot of it is eye training. A lot of it is learning to deal with your eyes. If your eyes are imperfect, you got to learn what works for you. And then I would don't underestimate lighting and choosing the right level of your music stand. If you're using a music stand, learn how to place your music stand that's beneficial for your vision. It's it that's like makes the difference of success and failure. Yeah.

Rita says, "I use all four Walts books all the time and also Jay Anger's book." Yes, another Walt's book. Jay Anger's book. Simple melodies, nothing really intimidating. All for Strings is a great book, Sarah. Thank you for that. All for Strings, and it's inexpensive. Very inexpensive and has big bubble notes. Very unintimidating. Great ideas, you guys. Vermont Violins is where Wayne got the Portland books. Wow. $18 each. That's crazy. I was I think I paid 25 for mine like 10 years ago. So Wayne got the Portland collection at Vermont Violins. I'm not sure where to get the the uh Waltz books, but they shouldn't be more than $15 a volume. Okay. So, who else? Any questions? $500 for the Waltz collection. Nope. Don't get it. Yeah, 20 at most. Okay. Yep. I'm just kind of catching up on your comments. I love the discussion and how you guys are helping each other out. That's it's wonderful. Yeah, it's on Amazon. Oh, All for Strings is on Amazon. Yes, it is. And it's it's a decent price.

Um, okay. So, we've got five minutes left. I'm going to keep scanning the comments, but there's one thing we didn't talk about that's that's well several things. We didn't talk about time signatures, key signatures, or dotted note rhythms. And I want to tell you about dotted note rhythms. Key signature and time signature. You can read music without understanding those things right away, but they're important to understand them, but they're not a first step. So, we're going to postpone that step. so that I can show you what dotted rhythms are. Those throw more people through a loop than you can imagine. So, let's start with a whole note. Let's put a whole note here. Now, the the rule about a dot is a dot adds half of the note that was dotted, half of its value onto it. So, what that means is we know that a a whole note is worth four beats, right? Four quarter notes. Half of four is two. So if we dot that whole note, we would expect to add two more quarter notes to it. And that's exactly what happens. Watch what the software does when I dot this note. It's going to add it. There's no more room. There's no more room in this measure for two more quarter notes because this measure is full. So, the software added a half note to it. There's your That's your two quarter notes. That's what happened when I dotted this note. But, let me show you something that doesn't do that because that's kind of funky. Let me show you a half note. Okay, there's a half note. Now, a half note is worth two quarter notes, right? What's half of two? One. One is half of two. So if we dot the half note, we expect to add half of we have to add half of these guys. Half of those is one. So a dotted half note right here is worth three quarter notes, not two. Let me add that. So that's if you see that it's worth three quarter notes. Let's dot uh let's find a quarter note. You just really have to know your note values. So a quarter note and that's when the So I'm going to dot this and then I'm going to show you the rhythm pyramid. So a dotted quarter note. What the heck is that worth? Let's go to the rhythm pyramid. and it was a quarter note. A quarter note is worth two eighth notes. So if we took those two eighth notes and added half more, it would be three eighth notes. A dotted quarter would be worth three eighth notes. And so the way you'd count that would be one and two. Remember how we counted these guys here? We counted one and two and three and four and. So when you're counting a dotted quarter note, you'd count one and two, one and two. Okay? With a dotted note, where is the emphasis? The emphasis is right on the beginning of the note. Um, and let me just show you. I can write the value of this dotted quarter note. I can write it like this. I can So, and then if I add one eighth note and then if I tie these like that, you guys, this rhythm here. Oops. Right there. That rhythm is the same as that rhythm. One and two. One and two. Let me see what the other questions are. With a dotted note, where is the emphasis? Does that answer your question, Skylark? Yeah. So, let me just play this line for you. 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 rest. One and two rest. Three and four rest. These two notes were identical. One and two rest. Three and four rest. Okay, cool. That answered Skylark's question. Now you guys, this is just the nutshell and it's just meant to encourage you. It's there's no mystery. It's not as scary as people make it out to be. It's just not. But it does require regular effort like daily effort. If you don't do it daily, it's hard to get traction. It is you got to say for 30 days, I'm going to do it every day for 30 days. By the time 30 days are up, you're going to be like, oh, I can totally do this. And then it'll be easier to keep working on it because you'll start to see success. So, if I can do anything to help any of you get on the road to reading music, email me. My email is easy. It's laura red desertviolin.com. Feel free to reach out or comment. Although the comments might disappear. I'm not sure. Email me. Do whatever I can to help you. And if you want the rhythm pyramid, email me. Thank you everybody for showing up. It's really nice to see the same faces show up and some new faces as well. And um yeah, I'll see you next week 11:00 a.m. We'll uh determine the topic. This topic was due to uh viewers request. So if you have a request, send it and we'll get to it soon as we can. Thanks y'all.