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Lesson Seven: A Few Musical Symbols and Terms

Music is a language and has punctuation signs also. Words are divided into sentences, while music is divided into phrases. These musical phrases are marked with curved lines called slurs.

Musical phrases are to played legato, which means to play them very smoothly. When playing "legato", your fingers "walk" on the keys. Don't lift your finger from the first note until you've started playing the second note. Before lifting your finger from the second note, start playing the next note, and so on.

The opposite of legato is staccato. When a dot is placed above or below a note, play that note staccato, or in a short, jumpy way. When playing staccacto, touch the notes as if they are hot. Staccato notes have small black dots immediately above or below them.

Musical Rests

Rests are signs of silence. Each note has a rest sign of the same value.

For instance:

A Quarter rest equals 1 count, just like the Quarter-note:

A Half rest equals 2 counts, just like the Half-note:

A equals 4 counts, just like the Whole-note:

In the following song, the whole rest on the bottom staff in the first measure tells you to "rest" your left hand for the whole measure. The half rest on the bottom staff in the next measure tells you to rest your hand for two beats, then the quarter rest tells you to rest your hand for one more beat, then play the quarter note for one beat.

Repeat Signs

Two dots before or after a double bar indicate Repeat signs. These signs instruct you to play all of the measures enclosed by the repeat signs through twice.

So when you're playing a song and you reach the repeat sign (the double bar with two dots before them), go back to the double bars with two dots after it and play through again. If there is no first repeat sign, go back to the beginning of the song.

Ties

A tie is a curved line placed over two notes of the same pitch (Two D's, two C's, etc). You play the first note only, but hold it down for the total time value of both notes. For instance, in the first example below, a tie is placed above a certain note (that note's another C - you'll learn about it later). You only play the note once, but you'll actually hold it down for three beats, because the first note under the tie is a half-note, which counts for two beats, and the second note under the tie is a quarter-note, which counts for one beat.

In the second example above, the tie is placed under a G note. Because the first note above the tie is a dotted half-note, and receives three beats, and the second note above the tie is a quarter-note, and receives one beat, you would hold down the note for four beats.

Lesson Eight: Sharps and Flats

Emily Sigers
emily@thepianopages.com