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 tenutomark, 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 additionalnotes
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 noteis 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