How to read music – Harp Tuesday

Ep. 273 – testing out Note Rush, a sight-reading app

Once you understand the basics of learning to read music (I did an episode on it many, many years ago! Episode 5…) I think the best way to get fluent is just doing it enough that it becomes second nature.

Drill/flash card style apps can potentially be a good tool. I’ve always thought it would be great to have an app that would let you play the note you think it is on your instrument, and tell you if you were right or wrong! (Rather than typing it, or otherwise indicating the note on the screen).

Thanks to a Facebook discussion I became aware of Note Rush, an app which does just that. In this episode I go over how it works and some of the quirks and downsides.

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Ep. 231 – what is the difference between 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures?

The time signatures of 3/4 and 6/8 both contain a total of six 8th notes. So what is the difference between them?? This is a question I’ve often been asked by students, and in this video I attempt to answer. (Quick answer – 3/4 has 3 beats or pulses per bar, and 6/8 only has 2 beats).

For further reading, the wikipedia page on time signatures is a good starting place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

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Ep. 80 How to read music part 2 – Rhythm!

In this episode of Harp Tuesday I finally (!) finish my look at how to read music. In December of 2010, for my fifth episode of Harp Tuesday, I talked about how to decipher notes on the printed page and translate them into which strings to play on the harp… In this episode I talk about the other aspect of written music – Rhythm!

This was a tricky episode to put together, and I’m still not sure how much sense it makes, but if you’re trying to learn to read music hopefully this will help!

You can download the PDF sheet showing what shapes equal what note durations (Whole note, half note, etc.) here.

Ep. 5 How to tune your harp + How to read music

In this episode I cover two topics – tuning your harp and learning to read music. I’ve also included the conclusion to my look at learning to read music, Harp Tuesday ep. 80

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Support from my patrons helps make continued Harp Tuesday episodes possible – if you would like to help support future videos you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/joshlayne