Breathing and Breath Marks
When you are playing, you use up breath fairly quickly, which means you will often have to take a new breath between some of the notes. Try breathing every two bars at first. In the next song you will see a sign called a breath mark. It looks like this ; .
In the beginning it is a good idea to breathe every time you see a breath mark even if you don’t need to. Take a quick, deep breath and then keep playing. Remember to keep a relaxed, upright posture and look straight ahead of you as if you were speaking to someone the same height as yourself. Tap your foot in time to the music so you don’t lose the timing when you breathe.
This song contains four bars of quarter notes in * time. Count 1 2 3 4 and then play the notes smoothly and evenly. Remember to breathe each time you see a breath mark.
The Quarter Rest
This symbol is called a quarter rest.
It means there is one beat of silence.
Do not play any note where you see a rest. We place small counting numbers under rests.
A rest is always a good place to take a breath. When you see a rest, hold the note you are playing right up to the beat where the rest occurs, and then take a relaxed breath on that beat. Remember to keep counting and tapping your foot where you see a rest, even though you are not playing.
Notice that there are two lines of music joined together here. The top line is for you to play and the bottom line is for your teacher. This is called a duet, which means two instruments play their parts together. Learn your part well so you don’t get distracted by the other part.
