Level 4 (like Grade 4) · Unit 19 of 24

Reading music for your instrument

Connect the notes on the page to your own instrument: its clef, its written notes, fingering, tab or chord shapes.

By the end you will be able to:

• read notes in your instrument’s clef
• connect written notes with fingering, tab or chord shapes
• know whether your instrument transposes

Learn

Your clef and your notes

Each instrument reads in its own clef: treble for recorder, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, violin and guitar; bass for cello, bassoon, trombone and bass guitar; alto for viola. Piano reads both at once. Choose your instrument below and the practice questions will use your clef and your notes.

Fingering, tab and shapes

Learning which fingering (or fret, valve or string) makes each written note is what turns reading into playing. Woodwind and brass charts show which holes or valves to press; guitar and ukulele players can also read tab – lines for strings and numbers for frets – and chord boxes.

Written note or sounding note?

If you play a transposing instrument, always read the WRITTEN note and finger it – the instrument makes the sound. Classfern’s questions and practical tests are written for your instrument, so the notes you see are the notes you finger.

Your turn

Watch and listen, then practise with new questions every time – reading questions, and writing tasks you answer on the stave. Take the check when you are ready: 80% passes the unit.

Choose your instrument above. You can also open its own page: Recorder · Flute · Clarinet · Saxophone · Trumpet · Violin · Guitar · Ukulele · Singing. For playing tests with the microphone or a MIDI keyboard, try the practical tests.

Level 4 is like Grade 4 music theory. These are Classfern’s own levels, not an exam board’s. Questions are made and marked by rules in your browser.