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You’ve mastered playing from one note to the next, you are reading notes from a score, now it’s time to take a look at articulation.
When you articulate something as you speak, the definition is that you are giving clarity to the words, it’s how you distinguish the words, put in the punctuation etc. It’s not that dissimilar in music. To articulate is to play the notes in specific ways. In music there are several ways to articulate, but we’re just going to concentrate on two parallels in their simplest forms.
Have a listen and watch each of the different types of articulation.
Legato:
Legato is played by ‘passing’ one note to the next and ensuring there is no gap or silence between the two consecutive notes. Sometimes, when you are in the beginner stages of reading music, legato can be confused with a tie. Remember if the notes are the same then it is a tie, not legato notes.
Staccato:
To play this type of staccato, you need to ensure that your arm and wrist are relaxed and you ‘bounce’ your finger onto the note and immediately straight up, so you need to keep your fingers fairly stiff. Imagine the keyboard is red hot and you bring your finger straight back up as soon as you have made the sound.
A common misconception, particularly with staccato is that the value (or length) of a note such as a crotchet, is shortened by playing it staccato.
This is definitely not the case. If you are playing a crotchet the remaining time of the beat is silence, it is still worth one beat.
This is a very simple look at two forms of articulation that you will need when you are learning.
Here’s a fun piece of Poulenc that demonstrates a few different types of staccato.
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