Beginner guide to reading sheet music for the violin

Learn how to read which note and finger to play and in which rhythm

Do you have a strong desire to learn the violin, but have never read music before in your life?

The prospect of learning music notation should not be a paralyzing fear that keeps you from following your musical dreams. By learning a few basics and practicing patience, you can learn to read music fluently while still enjoying your music-making.

The first step is making sure you understand what all the shapes and symbols on the page refer to. If the composer bothered putting it down, it’s probably important! To demonstrate this, let’s look at a simple example where I’ve highlighted all the different types of markings:

Orange: Composers often put a simple word or phrase in the top left-hand corner to describe the emotion feeling the piece should have, in this case “Lively”. Often there will also be a specific tempo marking in this corner.

Red: The treble clef sign appears at the beginning of every line of violin music. Treble clef tells you which line the note G is on. All violin music is written only in this clef (sorry violists!).

Blue: The key signature consists of either sharps or flats (never both). If the piece is in C Major or A Minor, there will be nothing marked in the key signature. Don’t worry, this will make more sense when we discuss keys and accidentals further down. Knowing your key signatures is very important for putting your fingers in the right place.

Pink: Measure lines divide music into equally-sized boxes, making it easier to read and count.
Green: The time signature shows how many beats are in each measure. The top number shows how many beats there are, and the bottom number shows what type of note (half, quarter, eighth, etc.) gets the beat. We will discuss this more in the section on rhythms. In more advanced sheet music, the time signature (and/or key signature) may change in the middle of the piece.

Yellow: A double bar line with two dots is a repeat sign, meaning to play the preceding section over again. In the second half of this piece, you can see repeat signs at the beginning of the third line and the end of the fourth line, indicating the exact section to be repeated.

Grey, Purple, Lime Green: Any other special markings you see on the page are technique markings. In this case, there are slurs, staccato marks, and accent marks. Advanced pieces, such as the Sibelius violin concerto, have tons of very specific technique marks! Always look up ones you aren’t familiar with.

Now that we’ve been through the basics of what you’ll see in music, let’s get to the fun part: reading notes!

Reading Notes in Violin Music

The first notes you will learn on violin are the open strings: G, D, A, E.

Below is how the open strings sound, so you can recognize them. Always make sure your violin is tuned. You can use my free online violin tuner with microphone and tuning notes for that.

Now before we jump in to reading all the notes in first position, let’s go over some key signatures. Sharps # raise the note a half step, flats b lower the note a half step. Every piece of classical music has a key signature, and every key signature goes with its own major and minor scales. The most common beginner violin scales are A Major, D Major, G Major, and C Major. If you want to get in some practice on these scales, check out the article Violin Scales: Learn the Most Common Scales on Violin.

If you have tapes on your violin, those tapes correspond to these notes (from low to high):
Open G A B C D
Open D E F# G A
Open A B C# D E
Open E F# G# A B

If your violin does not have tapes, watch this clip to see how the fingers are placed:

Every finger, but especially the second finger, can be placed on the fingerboard in “low” or “high” position. Just remember that this does NOT always correspond to sharp and flat. Playing a series of half steps is called chromaticism. Check out this clip to see how the fingers move from low to high and the corresponding notes:

Now that you are comfortable with reading the notes of first position (you’ve been practicing those scales, right?) It is time to see how they fit together in pieces. This is where rhythm becomes very important. Rhythm is how long or short notes are in relation to each other. So what does that mean?

How to Read Time Signatures

Measures of music are divided into beats. The beat stays steady, even if the rhythm is changing over it. Beat and rhythm are not the same thing! The beat of the music is more formally called the meter. There are two types: simple meter and compound meter. Simple meter is when the beats divide into twos, and compound meter is when the beats divide into threes. 2/4 and 4/4, and 3/4 are all examples of simple time, while 6/8 and 6/4 are examples of compound meter.

Dotted Rhythms

Whenever you see a dot next to a note (directly next to it, not under or over it as that means something else entirely), it tells us to add half of that note’s value to that note. Let’s use a dotted half note as an example. A half note gets two beats- half of two is one, so I add one beat to the note getting a total duration of three beats.

Reading Rests in Violin Sheet Music

For every note value, there is also a rest of the same length. Rests can also be combined into different lengths by using dots. Here is a chart of all the symbols for notes and rests:

How to know how fast you should play?

We’ve covered a lot around rhythm, but you might have noticed that this covers how fast the notes are in relation to another. We haven’t covered how to know in which tempo, how many beat per minute (BPM) a quarter note should be for example. That’s because there’s no fixed BPM for a quarter note or any other note value. It’s indicated by tempo markings. You can find a list of the most common tempo markings and their corresponding BPM right here.