One example of what I would consider complex music is this [https://imgur.com/Ss2W3z4](https://imgur.com/Ss2W3z4) .
So far I understand that when it is 4 / 4 half the bow lasts 2 beats. But what is 2/4?
What is the p
I know that crocodile mouth means open string
What is the n and v type shapes on top of the notes mean?
I think the dot next to the note means that note is played slower. But how is it physically possible? any help will be appreciated
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Your understanding is far from correct. I’d encourage you to abandon everything you think you know about notation and start over.
4/4 is a time signature. A time signature indicates how many beats are in a bar and which note value is considered the beat.
The top number indicates number of beats and the bottom number indicates note value. So, in 4/4, there are 4 beats of quarter notes per bar. In 2/4, there are two beats of quarter notes per bar. As you can see in the 2/4 example you shared, each bar has two quarter notes worth of rhythmic value in it. We’ll talk about the dots in a second, but if you look at the second bar you’ll see one quarter note followed by one quarter note rest. Of course this is two quarter notes worth of rhythm.
Edit: the time signature has nothing to do with the bow speed or amount used per note. In fact, it is often the case that a violinist will change bow directions several time within a bar and/or not make it to either extreme end of the bow.
The p stands for “piano”, which in this case is a dynamic marking which indicates to play softly.
By “crocodile mouth”, I assume you mean the crescendo marking- this means to increase dynamic over the duration of the crescendo.
The n and v shapes are downbows and upbows, respectively; the downbow (n), tells the player to start that note with a downbow and the upbow (v) tells the player to start that note with an upbow.
The dot next to a notehead is a rhythmic value modifier. It tells you to multiply the note’s value by 1.5. In other words, you’d add half the value of the note to the note. In this case, we have dotted quarter notes. A dotted quarter note is worth 1.5 quarter notes. The final eighth note (.5 the value of a quarter note) fills out the bar.
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