Rhythm on the violin – How to subdivide

Learning to subdivide is critical to playing the correct rhythm on the violin. Many students don’t learn to subdivide until college, or even beyond. For these students, sight reading can be a nightmare and playing with others is nearly impossible. While some students possess the uncanny ability to play rhythm without even thinking about it, for the rest of us, subdivision is an often neglected necessity in their violin study.

This article covers the basic steps in learning to subdivide. There are, of course, other ways to achieve this goal, but the method I present here works and can help you feel more confident about your pace and sight-reading ability.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Find the abbreviated note value in the music to be subdivided. Let’s assume, for the purposes of this article, that the eighth note is the shortest note value in a given passage. There may be a sixteenth note here and there, but just a couple of them usually don’t warrant counting in sixteenth notes.

2. Determine the number of eight notes per bar. Assuming, for the purposes of this article, that the time signature is 4/4, there are eight of them per measure.

3. Search the music for all the other note values, including the dotted rhythms, and determine how many eighth notes each contains. For example, a quarter note equals two eighth notes, a dotted quarter note contains three, a half note contains four, a dotted half contains six, and a whole note contains a full bar’s worth of eighth notes or eight of them.

4. As you play, count each measure in eighth notes, starting at one and ending at eight.

5. Be sure to count to eight before moving on to the next bar.

6. While counting, each eighth note should remain constant and even, with no change in tempo, unless such a change is indicated by the music.

7. Practicing with a metronome set to one click every eight notes can help keep a steady beat. If you have a metronome that can produce a different pitch for a downbeat, this setting can also help you keep track of the start and end of measures.

8. When the bars are too fast to count on the shorter note value, choose another note value that you can reasonably count on, and then train yourself to play two or more notes per larger note value.

By following these steps, you can learn to subdivide, which will help you become a better musician, better able to sight read and play with others with confidence.