Musical Note Tracing

What if learning to read music couldn't be simpler?

Let's make it simple as ABC.

Musical Note Tracing books make it fun to join the dots and write your first musical notes.

Your preschooler will love these activity guides, created by a professional violinist and pianist.

No grown-up required.

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

A dog is 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

While contemplating 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

Corazon (kor-ah-SOHN) 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.

In 1986, following the encouragement 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.

Alongside her musical life, she qualified as a therapist 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.

Known to many as Cora, she is now back in New Zealand, where it all began.

Read the full biography →

The books

Treble clef

Musical Note Tracing

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

Musical Note Tracing

Simple step by step activities to read and write music in the bass clef. The same organic, joyful approach — extended into the lower range of the musical world.

A Rainbow Notes series — further titles coming soon.

Order directly from Cora

1–2 copies

$35

Per book · Postage included · Available on Amazon

Order on Amazon

3+ copies

$30

Per book · Postage included · Order directly from Cora

Order now

10+ copies

$22.50

Per book · Postage included · Order directly from Cora

Order now

Schools / Kindergartens / Early Learning

20+

Ordering for a group or organisation? Get in touch — we'd love to work something out.

Contact Cora

Also available on Amazon — or skip the middleman and order directly from Cora.

Further titles coming soon