Reading two notes at once
Stage 3 taught you that two noteheads stacked on one stem mean play them together — a double stop — as opposed to a beam, which means one after another. Now you read them at speed. The key is that you don't read a double stop as two separate pitches; you read the bottom note as a string level and the top note as the melody sitting on it.
The four kinds, easiest first
| Kind | Example | Readable now? |
|---|---|---|
| open + open | D + A, A + E | yes — no fingers at all |
| open string + a stopped note above it | open D + B on the A string | yes |
| a stopped note + an open string above it | F♯ on the D string + open A | yes |
| stopped + stopped | both fingers down | Stage 6 — needs the shifting hand |
The first three keep one string open, so your left hand only has one job. Read the open note first — it tells you which pair of strings the bow is sitting across — then place the one finger.
Reading a rolled chord
A 3- or 4-note chord can't sound all at once — the bridge is curved. So you read it as a
melody note on top with a chord under it, and the bow rolls from the lowest string up
to land and hold the top (Stage 5, rolling-a-chord-with-the-bow). Your eye goes to the top
notehead; your ear expects the quick bottom-to-top sweep. The lower notes need to be on
different strings — if two of them would land on the same string, it's a misprint or an
arrangement you can't play as written.
Try it
Try
Play bar 1 of the example — just rock the bow between two open strings, both ringing. Then bar 2: keep the open D sounding and add 1st then high-2 on the A string above it. Feel that a double stop is one string you know plus one finger. Save the stopped-plus-stopped ones for after you can shift.
The usual mistake
Trying to read and pitch both notes of the double stop as equals, which doubles the work. One of them is almost always an open string in first-position writing — find it first, set the bow on that string-pair, and the double stop becomes a single-finger problem. The other mistake: forcing a 3-note chord flat in one stroke and crushing the tone — it rolls.