A slur is a symbol in
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
indicating that the
notes
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* Notes (album), ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) sho ...
it embraces are to be played without separation (that is, with
legato
In music performance and notation, legato (; Italian for "tied together"; French ''lié''; German ''gebunden'') indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, the player makes a transition from note to note wit ...
articulation). A slur is denoted with a
curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight.
Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (ge ...
d
line generally placed over the notes if the
stems point downward, and under them if the stems point upwards.
The example below shows two measures in with a slur for each measure:
:
\relative c''
Performance
![G run in G](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/G_run_in_G.png)
Slurs mean different things for different instruments:
*For
bowed string instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the ...
s, the notes should be played in one
bow stroke
On a bowed string instrument, a bow stroke is the movement of the bow back and forth perpendicularly across the string, from the frog to the tip and from the tip to the frog, producing sound. Multiple notes in one bow stroke are indicated by th ...
.
* For
plucked string instrument
Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate. Plucki ...
s, such as
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
s, the notes should be played without plucking the individual strings (
hammer-on
A hammer-on is a playing technique performed on a stringed instrument (especially on a fretted string instrument, such as a guitar) by sharply bringing a fretting-hand finger down on to the fingerboard behind a fret, causing a note to sound. This ...
s and
pull-off
A pull-off is a stringed instrument playing and articulation technique performed by plucking or "pulling" the finger that is grasping the sounding part of a string off the fingerboard of either a fretted or unfretted instrument. This intermediate- ...
s).
* For
wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitc ...
s, the notes should be played without re-articulating each note (
tonguing
Tonguing is a technique used with wind instruments to enunciate notes using the tongue on the palate or the reed or mouthpiece. A silent "tee" is made when the tongue strikes the reed or roof of the mouth causing a slight breach in the air fl ...
), except for the
slide trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrat ...
(and other instruments that control the pitch with a slide), on which only certain kinds of combinations can be played with no tongue without making a glissando – thus "legato tonguing" is employed.
* For
vocal music
Vocal music is a type of singing performed by one or more singers, either with musical instruments, instrumental accompaniment, or without instrumental accompaniment (a cappella), in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which ...
, slurs are usually used to mark notes which are
sung to a single
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
(
melisma
Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referr ...
).
A slur can be extended over many notes, sometimes encompassing several
bars. In extreme cases, composers are known to write slurs which are near-impossible to achieve; in that case the composer wishes to emphasise that the notes should be performed with as much legato as possible.
See also
*
Tie (music)
In music notation, a tie is a curved line connecting the heads of two notes of the same pitch, indicating that they are to be played as a single note with a duration equal to the sum of the individual notes' values. A tie is similar in appearan ...
, a similar symbol but for connecting lengths of notes together
*
Musical phrasing
Musical phrasing is the method by which a musician shapes a sequence of notes in a passage of music to allow expression, much like when speaking English a phrase may be written identically but may be spoken differently, and is named for the in ...
References
{{Musical notation
Articulations (music)
Musical notation
es:Legato