Musical Note Tracing

The philosophy

Children don't yet have the architecture that places them outside the natural world. That's not a gap. That's a gift.

When a child traces a note, something lands in the body before the mind has a chance to intervene. This is kinetic familiarity — learning through the hand, through touch, through the simple satisfaction of the line completed.

These books make learning to read music organic and fun. No prior knowledge needed — from child or parent. No right answer. Just the dots, the pencil, and the note taking shape.

Music moves through the body the same way colour does, the same way vibration does. The books begin there — in the body, before the theory, before the terminology. Exactly where a preschooler already lives.

A poem by Cora Renata

These Bees Have a Gig in my Garden 🐝

These bees have a gig in my garden
With an orchestra of flowers
They climb up inside every bell
The foxgloves'll take 'em hours

Some dance on the thistle
As if they're not under threat
Maybe they'll teach us humans
How to treat each other yet

Yeah I know they're all one colour
Yellow and black; just the same
The big ones don't pick on the wee ones
They don't seem to play the blame game

The fuchsias have closed up their trumpets
A breeze only blows them today
Violas? pansies? What are these called?
They're really bright; so gay!

A queen queerly sits in waiting
Her workers aren't overly taxed
They're doing what comes naturally
Without breaking their backs

My dog stands writing a poem
Her nose directs the pen
Nothing touches the perfection
Of her sense of now; there's no when

These bees have a gig in my garden
Been watching their entries for an hour
To a background of throbbing traffic
In the foreground hangs a breathless flower

I'm not a very good listener
Breezy leaves don't catch my eye
And the bees are changing our planet
They look like they want to fly

Contemplating in her garden during lockdown, the poet observes that music isn't limited to concert halls, vast arenas and smoke-filled rooms. Frequency and vibration, sound and colour run through the natural world — uninterrupted by the news items that preoccupy the adult mind: statues being felled, identity politics, racial tensions and reports of impending environmental doom.

The poem reveals a process of remembering — the simplicity of a child's view of the natural world.

For all our striving, it may just be that the bees have got this.

About Cora

Cora Renata's musical journey began at four, when her father sat her down with a piece of manuscript paper and showed her, step by step, how to draw a treble clef. It was, she says, a key unlocking a whole world — and fittingly, the word "clef" means key. By six she had chosen her instrument — the violin — teaching herself to play by ear before formal training began.

Cora began teaching in New Zealand at sixteen, when both her violin and piano teachers — independently of one another — asked her to take on their overflow students. At nineteen, her concert tours introducing children to music from around the world were endorsed by the New Zealand Education Board.

In 1986, following the suggestion of international violinists Carl Pini and Julian Quirit — who had independently heard her play in Melbourne — she travelled to New York to audition before the legendary Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School of Music. She went, she says, expecting nothing. DeLay offered her a scholarship. She was also awarded a scholarship to the New England Conservatory in Boston, which she elected to attend.

In 1987 she arrived in London, where a remarkable career unfolded across two decades. Orchestral credits include Leader of the English Concert Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Phantom of the Opera and recordings for Classic FM. She appeared on BBC1 Television with the Taringa Quartet — performing at Princess Diana's birthday party at Kensington Palace, London's Barbican, and the National Theatre.

In London, her teaching extended from private students and the Bromley Youth Music Trust to tutoring an orchestra at Oxford University.

Alongside her musical life, Cora qualified as a therapist, holds diplomas in Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, and became a Member of the Independent Professional Therapists International (IPTI), practising Craniosacral Therapy and Head Massage for twenty years, including work with premature babies at Lewisham Hospital.

As successive UK governments cut music education funding, Cora became increasingly inventive in finding ways to teach children to read music. The result, decades later, is her Rainbow Notes series — simple, step by step activity books teaching children as young as three to trace, read and write musical notes, with no prior knowledge required from child or parent.

Read the full biography →

The books

Treble clef

Simple step by step activities to read and write music in the treble clef. Join the dots, trace the notes, and write musical notation with your own hand — the first time, every time.

Bass clef