We all know that music reading takes practice and simple memorization of what each note looks like on the staff.  But what holds many students back is the speed that they can recognize and play notes.

There are some great software programs out there, but one of my favorites for many years has been the wonderful website, MusicTheory.net.  The site is full of free lessons and exercises from very simple, to complex. Ricci Adams, author of the site, has spent countless hours creating and updating this exceptional (and did I mention free?) music theory site.  The exercises portion of the site allow teachers to create customized exercises for many different types of music theory exercises such as note name reading, key signature identification, and more.  The customization allows you to choose clef, range, and other parameters.  Once you have your settings the way you want, it provides a custom URL to use/share.  You can find the exercise customizer here.  The website’s FAQ page even includes instructions on how to assign exercises as homework, and allows students to print out a customized sheet with their scores.

I’ve created a few handy exercises for beginning orchestra students and have created three sequential levels.  The bronze level are notes in the D Major scale, and the silver level adds the notes on the G string (A string for double bass), and the gold level are all notes on all strings in first position.  All clefs are available, so what a great way to create exercises for your advanced cellists to learn their tenor clef note names!?

Below are the exercises I’ve created.  Feel free to steal/share!

Bronze Level
(Notes in the D Major Scale)

You should be able to complete at least 50 in a row with no mistakes before going on to the silver level.

VIOLIN | VIOLA | CELLO & BASS

Silver Level
(Notes in the D Major Scale plus G string notes)

You should be able to complete at least 75 in a row with no mistakes before going on to the gold level.

VIOLIN | VIOLA | CELLO | BASS – D major scale plus A string notes

Gold Level
(Notes on all four strings!)

You should be able to complete at least 100 in a row with no mistakes before calling yourself a note naming wiz!

VIOLIN | VIOLA | CELLO | BASS

Titanium Level
(Notes in upper position)

VIOLIN | VIOLA| CELLO | BASS

Violas Only!
(Learn to read notes in treble clef!!)

TREBLE CLEF EXERCISES for VIOLA

Cellos Only!
(Learn to read notes in tenor clef!)

TENOR CLEF EXERCISES for CELLO

Exercises can even be embedded into your website/blog using the the <iframe> tag.  Directions are available here.

You can also download a text file that contains the HTML to the above exercises.  Just download and copy/paste into the HTML editor of your choice.

Finally, if you are using and iOS device, the author of MusicTheory.net has created an app called Tenuto.  It is a great bargain and also very powerful.  You can find it, along with a list of some of my other favorite music education apps here.

Best of luck creating new exercises!  If you have any you’d like to share, please leave them in the comments below!