The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Part 5:
Embellishing
216
A tie is made with a small curve, either above or below the note, like this:
Two identical notes tied together equal one long note.
Slurs
A 
slur
looks like a tie between two notes of different pitches, but really indicates
that the notes are to be played together as a continuous group. Although you
can’t play two different tones as a continuous note, you can run them together
without a breath or a space in between. This is called “slurring” the notes
together; it looks like this:
Lots of notes grouped together are played as a smooth phrase.
Often, wind instruments (trumpets, clarinets, and so forth) base their breathing
on the song’s phrases. They’ll blow during the phrase and breathe between the
phrase marks.
Bowed instruments (violins, cellos, and so forth) use phrases to time their bowing.
They’ll use a single, continuous movement of the bow for the duration of the
phrase; at the end of the phrase mark, they’ll change the direction of their bowing.
Two different notes tied together are slurred together.
There’s a subtle difference between two notes that are slurred together and two
notes that aren’t. The notes without the slur should each have a separate attack,
which ends up sounding like a slight emphasis on each note. The second of the
two slurred notes doesn’t have a separate attack, so the sound is much smoother
as you play from note to note.
Phrases
When you see a curved line above several adjacent notes, it’s not a slur—it’s a
phrase
. You use phrase marks to indicate separate ideas within a longer piece of
music. When one idea ends, you end the phrase mark; when a new idea begins,
you start a new phrase mark.
The curved line
used in a slur is called a
slur
mark.
Definition
Technically, a phrase mark
indicates that a passage
of music is played
legato
—which means to
play smoothly.
Note

---

Chapter 17:
Special Notation
217
The Long and the Short of It
Back in Chapter 7, you learned about some of the embellishments you can make
to individual notes—accents, marcatos, and so on. There are a few more marks
you can add to your notes; they’re presented here.
Tenuto
A straight horizontal line over a note means to play the note for its full dura-
tion. In other words, stretch it out for as long as possible.
This mark is called a 
tenuto
mark, and it looks like this:
The tenuto mark means to play a long note.
Staccato
The opposite of a long note is a short note; the opposite of tenuto is 
staccato.
A
dot on top of a note means do not play it for its full duration; just give it a little
blip and get off it.
A staccato mark looks like this:
The staccato mark means to play a short note.
When Is a Note More Than a Note?
There are other marks you can add to your notes that indicate 
additional
notes
to play. These notes are kind of musical shorthand you can use in place of writ-
ing out all those piddly smaller notes.
Grace Notes
A 
grace note
is a short note you play in front of a main note. In mathematical
terms, a grace note might have the value of a sixteenth or a thirty-second note,
depending on the tempo of the music. Basically, you play the grace note just
ahead of the main note, at a slightly lower volume level. When you note a grace
note, write it as a smaller note just in front of the main note, like this:
Drummers call a grace
note a 
flam,
because (on
a drum) that’s what it
sounds like—”fa-lam!”
Note

---