Chapter 17:Special Notation 219
Glissandos
Whereas turns and trills alternate between two or three neighboring notes, a
glissandopacks a lot more notes into a short space. To be precise, a glissando is
a mechanism for getting from one pitch to another, playing every single pitch
between the two notes as smoothly as possible.
Depending on the instrument, a glissando can be a continuous glide between
the two notes (think trombone) or a run of sequential chromatic notes (think
piano). Glissandi (notglissandos!) can move either up or down; typically, both
the starting and ending notes are specified, like this:
On the piano, you can
also “cheat” a glissando
by playing only the white
keys between the top and
bottom tones—which lets
you play a glissando with
a stroke of your hand.NoteGlissando up—and down.
Arpeggiated Chords
When you want an instrument to play a chord as an arpeggio, but you don’t
want to write out all the notes, you can use the symbol called the role.The role
indicates that the instrument is to play an arpeggio—but a rather quick one.
This squiggly line tells the musician to play the written notes from bottom to
top, in succession, and to hold each note as it is played. The effect should be
something like a harp playing an arpeggiated chord, like this:
The quick and easy way to notate an arpeggiated accompaniment.Getting Into the Swing of Things
The last bit of notation I want to discuss concerns a feel. If you’ve ever heard
jazz music, particularly big band music, you’ve heard this feel; it’s called swing.
Traditional popular music has a straight feel; eighth notes are played straight,
just as they’re written. Swing has a kind of triplet feel; it swings along, all
bouncy, percolating with three eighth notes on every beat.
What’s that, you’re saying—threeeighth notes on every beat? How is that possible?
It’s possible because swing is based on triplets. Instead of having eight eighth
notes in a measure of 4/4, you have twelveeighth notes—four eighth-note
triplets. So instead of the basic beat being straight eighths, the first and third
beat of every triplet combine for a spang-a-lang-a-lang-a-lang kind of rhythm.