Musical melodies are somewhat similar to human speech. They are beautiful not only for the difference between the pitch and their duration, but also for intonation and articulation.
Musical touches
It is the shades of speech or melody that make them so unique. Performing a melody in which there is no articulation, different shades, sounds mechanical and empty. Such music will not catch the viewer, since it will sound like a monotonous monotonous speech.
Articulation in music refers to the different ways of "singing" a melody. This mainly concerns the coherence or dismemberment of notes. Articulation is especially indicated in the musical notation, indicating to the performer exactly how the specified fragment of the melody should be played.
The three main types of musical articulation or stroke are nonlegato, legato, and staccato. They are present in any piece of music.
The word "legato" is translated from Italian as "bound". From this name it follows that the notes must be played so that the sounds smoothly replace each other without jolts and interruptions. The sound should be distributed evenly from tone to tone. There are a huge number of exercises aimed at the correct development of the hand and fingers for the correct execution of this technique. In musical notation, the legato stroke is denoted by an arc or league.
These Italian words …
"Nonlegato" or "separate" is most often used in pieces performed at an agile tempo. This stroke is not indicated in any way in the notes. At the beginning of training, most students play separately. When played nonlegato, sounds from the instrument are produced smoothly without jerky or smooth sounding.
"Staccato" is translated from Italian as "abruptly". With this performance, the melody sounds sharp, with noticeable pauses between notes, while the pace of the game does not slow down. Staccato makes a piece of music light, delicate, graceful. This is a rather difficult technique for mastering, for many pianists, for example, from habit, their fingertips hurt, since they have to hit the keys sharply and shortly. In some ways, the stroke of staccato resembles a quick typing on the keyboard, only notes sound instead of the characteristic crackle. This stroke is the antipode of the legato stroke. In musical notation, it is indicated by a dot above or below the note, depending on where it is oriented.
These basic touches have spawned a ton of additional ones. But in fact, it is legato, staccato and nonlegato that determine the sound of the piece. Everything else is nuance. At the beginning of the training, musicians learn to make the difference between these techniques of sound production as noticeable as possible. A huge number of pieces of music are built on this difference.
