Advanced ADVANCED THEORY - Lesson 8 - Linked notes

[Andrew Milner]

So we have to use chains with our notes now?

1. Topics of discussion
2. Linked (legato) notes

1. Topics of discussion

In this tutorial, we will be talking about linked notes. So, let's have some fun.

2. Linked (legato) notes

Linked notes are notes that are tied together by a curved line on a music sheet. You may also find these notes referred to as tied notes or legato notes. How linked notes are played is very dependent on the instrument, but there is a general idea behind them. But before that, let's take a look at some legato examples:

And here they are played back.

So, what about these linked notes? Well, it's a bit hard to describe in written form, but here it goes. On a piano, when notes are not linked, the steps to playing them are the following:

• play the note
• lift the finger
• play the next note

However, when they are linked like in the first bar of the example above, you are supposed to go from one note to the next and lift the finger from the previous note after you have played the new one.

However, there is also another way in which you can link notes, which is present in the 3rd and 4th bars of the example above. This is easier, as you can hear. Basically, when you have notes linked in this manner, you consider them as a single note. And the length of that combined note is the sum of the notes which are linked.

And that about covers it for this tutorial as well. In the next one, we will be discussing repetition markers. See you then.