Taking more help away · From Zero to Mozart

Way back in Stage 1 (taking-the-help-away) you started reading with the note name, the string and the finger printed under every note — and then, lesson by lesson, that help came away. Stage 8 runs the whole ladder, all the way to a clean score, and re-runs it every time the music gets harder.

The five stages of help

Stage	What the page shows	What you supply
A	note name + string + finger + staff	nothing — just play
B	finger + staff	the note name (you read it)
C	staff + an occasional string cue	finger and string
D	normal notation; a finger only where it's non-obvious	fingering, mostly
E	a clean score	fingering and bowing, where the edition leaves it open

The principle: take the help away before it becomes a crutch — but not so early that you practise wrong notes. If Stage C is still shaky, you're not ready for D. If A is boringly easy, you're wasting time there.

Re-run it at every level-up

You don't do A→E once and you're done. Every time the material jumps — a new key, then accidentals, then (after Stage 6) a new position — you start further back up the ladder in that new context. You might be at Stage E in G major and Stage B in B♭ major on the same day. That's correct. Each new thing gets its own scaffold, briefly.

72 bpm

F major — a new key. Even if you read G major fluently at Stage E, read this one at Stage B or C: work out the fingering (note the LOW 1st finger for B♭ on the A string, and low 2 for F on the D string), reveal to check, and only drop the help once F major feels as easy as G.

How the site does it

The scaffold is the <NotatedExample>'s reveal setting:

Stage A — labels visible (reveal="shown", the default). Full help.
Stage B–C — reveal="hidden" (the worksheet): plain notation, you work it out, tap to reveal the answer.
Stage D–E — a card with no labels at all, just the notes and a pass condition. You own it.

So the sight-reading cards you're about to meet are just reveal="hidden" worksheets, with the harder ones dropping the labels entirely.

Try it

Try

Take a first-position tune you can play in G. Now find it (or write it) transposed to D, and to F. In G, play it at Stage E — clean, no help. In D, allow yourself Stage C. In F, go back to Stage B and work the fingering out. Feel how the same tune sits at different rungs in different keys.

The usual mistake

Two opposite ones. Clinging to the help — keeping the finger numbers because it's comfortable, so you never actually read. And dropping it too fast — playing a scaffold-D card when you're really a scaffold-B reader in that key, so you groove wrong notes. Be honest about which rung you're on, per key.