I Can Read Music: For Cello, Volume II
- Instrumentation
- Cello
- Composed
- 1997
- Publisher
- Summy-Birchard (Alfred Music), 00-0429
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About this piece
The second volume of Joanne Martin's note-reading course for cello, written for children who started by ear (for example in Suzuki programmes) and for any student who needs more reading practice. It works through about 100 short lessons with many repetitions at each stage, and many exercises are duets. New pitches are introduced in scale passages using accidentals before key signatures are used, and new rhythms are first practised on open strings. In her teachers' notes Martin asks students to sing each line before playing it and to name notes by letter rather than by finger number.
Technical overview
A note-reading course in first position on all four strings, moving through D, G, C, F and A major, with backward extension for B flat on the A string and forward extension on the G string in the later lessons. Rhythms build from quarter and half notes through Twinkle-variation patterns, rests, dotted rhythms, syncopation and triplets; meters run from 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4 to 2/2, 3/2, 4/2, 5/8, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8, often with the same melody notated in two meters. Bowing adds down- and up-bow marks, slurs, linked bowing and lifting and resetting the bow. Many lessons are duets.
Technical focus
- A String Notes
- D String Notes
- G String Notes
- C String Notes
- Extensions
- Accidentals
- Rhythm
- Dotted Rhythms
- Syncopation
- Triplets
- Bow Retakes
- Ensemble Skills
- Sight-Reading