Chords for Learn the VIOLIN - Lesson 3/20 - Names of strings & other notes

_ _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ [C] _ _
[Eb] _ _ [C] _ _ [Ebm] _ _ _ _
[C] _ Hi, I'm Alison, the online piano tutor and the online [F] violin tutor.
This is lesson three today.
So I'm going to be going through the notes on the violin
and the names [B] of the strings for you.
First of all, this is my violin.
You [G] will have the four strings, OK,
and what you'll notice about them is that you'll have one at the [F] top,
or if you were looking at the violin, that would be the one on the right.
This is the thinnest one, and then it gradually gets thicker and thicker
until it gets to the string at the bottom.
Now, very simply, the thin string at the top,
or on the right-hand side, is called the E string.
[C] The next one in is the A string, then the D string, and then the G string.
So E string, [G] A string, D string, G [Eb] string is the lowest at the bottom.
So they're your open strings.
So we call them open [D] strings because _ they're the strings that we [Ab] play
without having any fingers involved, so we just call them open strings.
So if anybody said, play me an open A string,
you would want to be playing _ this one,
which is the second one in from the top string, or the thinnest string.
_ OK, so as you'll notice, [Cm] actually, that I've put two little markers [N] on my violin.
Now, I wouldn't normally have them there, obviously, myself,
because I know where to put my fingers now.
But when I'm teaching my students how to play the violin,
these are the two markers that I would generally put on. _ _
Now, the _ red one that you can see here,
this would be where you would put your first finger,
which is this one here, your index finger.
The orange one here would be where you would put your third finger, OK?
And then your second finger would go somewhere, basically, in between the two,
but I'll come on to that in a minute.
It doesn't just go down in the middle anywhere, it has to go in a certain place,
but I'll just talk about that in a moment.
So this is where your first finger would sit,
and this is where your third finger would sit.
_ OK, now just to go through the names of the notes on the violin,
honestly, this is very, very simple.
The only thing you need to know is your alphabet, up to G,
so the first seven letters of the alphabet,
and you just need to remember the name of the open strings that we've got,
and that's it, you're good to go.
If you were to start on the G string, OK,
you've got an open G string, so this one here is the note of G, it's an open G.
If I were to put my first finger down the dot,
the next note up from G would be A.
Because our musical alphabet is based on the first seven letters,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
when we get to G, we would start again at A,
so G is like the new Z, if you want.
When you get to Z, you'd start again at the beginning of the alphabet, A.
So G is your new Z.
When you get to G, the next note up from G is A.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, and so on.
So you've got your open G string here, [G] _ this one.
When [Db] I put my first finger down on the red dot, where the first finger should go,
this is going to give me an A, because it's the next note up.
If I put my second finger [G] down, it's going to give me a B.
If I put my third finger down, it's going to give me a C, [N] OK?
Don't worry about the fourth finger at the moment.
We don't really use that so much at the moment,
so just think of the first three fingers.
I'll explain the fourth finger in a second.
So once we've gone G, A, B, C,
we'd move on to the D string.
That would obviously be next.
The first finger on the D would be E,
second finger F, third finger G,
and then we're on to the A string.
_ First finger on A is B, C, D, then open E, F, G, and A.
So basically, every time you put a finger down on the string,
it gives you the next note up.
So as long as you know the first seven letters of the alphabet and your open strings,
just count up the alphabet from the open strings and you're good to go.
_ So if I just do that again quickly for you,
so open G, A, B, C, open D, E, F, G,
open A, B, C, D, open E, F, G, and A.
And that's it, and that's basically your notes on the violin.
So, I mean, when you're learning the violin,
I know I put this into lesson three,
the main thing you need to get from lesson three is just to learn the open strings,
but I'm explaining about the other strings just so you guys know, you know,
because obviously you're going to say, oh, what note does it get if you put your third finger down on the A string?
So basically I'm just explaining that to you.
So when you're learning the violin, you wouldn't be [Db] expected to know that information
because as you move on through the rest of the course of my lessons,
_ you'll start to put in the fingers and you'll start to learn them as you're playing them in the music.
You wouldn't be expected to learn where all the notes are on the strings at the moment just on its own,
because that won't actually make sense to you until you start to put them [Am] into the music.
So for lesson [N] three, you just need to make sure that you know the names of your open strings.
And don't forget, follow me on lesson four, five, six, and everything will gradually be put together.
So I was saying earlier about the fourth finger, not to really worry about it.
Well, what does the fourth finger do?
You've got open G, first finger I said was A, second finger B, third finger C.
I put the fourth finger down, obviously it's going to give me a D because that's what comes after C.
But in this case, it is the same as the open string next to it.
So it kind of doubles up.
Open G, one on G is A, two on G is B, three on G is C, four on G is D.
So it's the same as the next string up.
So that's why I didn't really want to include the fourth finger because it doubles up as the next string above it.
So to show you again, if you've got open D, one on D is E, _ two on D is F, three on D is G, _ four on D is A, which is the same as the next string above it.
The only one that kind of doesn't apply to basically is the E string where we don't have another string above the E string.
But if we did, it would be open E, one on E is F, G, A, and the fourth finger would be B.
So hopefully that gives you some idea of where the fingers are going to go. _
Some of the notes aren't strictly correct on the violin.
Some of them are going to be sharps and flat notes, for example.
_ And I will be going through that in the next course of lessons.
But like I said earlier, the only thing you really need to get from lesson three is just the open strings, the names of the open strings.
But I'm just giving you a little bit more information because I normally find that people just want to ask,
what happens if you put the third finger down on the G string and that kind of thing.
So you don't need to know about any of that yet, but I'm just letting you know because I think sometimes that helps if you do know a little bit more information.
When you do come to put it all together, you can think, oh yeah, that makes sense now.
So I will be going through the actual correct names of the notes later on down the line.
But as I said, we don't need to know or worry too much about that at this stage.
OK, so hopefully now we've learnt some of the names on the strings.
Just to put that to the test, if I were to say to you, if I put the third finger on the A string, what note would that give me?
So what I would do, obviously start at the open A string.
I don't need to start all the way at the bottom, that's just wasting time.
I can start at the open A string.
I know one on A is B because the next note after A is B.
I know two on A is C and I know three on A is D.
So the answer is third finger on the A string [B] gives me the note of D. _
If I were to put the second finger on the D string, well I know I've got an open D.
First finger on D gives me E and the second finger [Ab] on D gives me an [Dm] F.
So [G] that's how I can work out some of the names of the notes.
And again when you start to put that with the music and we start to gradually introduce playing the fingers along with music on the violin,
all of this will come together and make sense [Eb] to you.
_ Thanks for watching and hopefully that explains a little bit about the strings and the notes on the violin.
[C] And don't forget to [Ebm] subscribe.
_ [C] _ _ [Eb] _ _ [C] _ _ [Ebm] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _