The course › Unit 9: Scales and technique
Lesson 54 of 72 · Connect, detach, color: make the notes speak
The same notes can tell very different stories depending on how you play them: that’s articulation.
Watch out: Don’t confuse a slur, over different notes (you connect them), with the tie from lesson 35, between two identical notes (you hold the note without playing it again).
Play legato: press each key at the exact moment you release the one before, as if you were walking on your fingertips. No gaps between the notes.
Now staccato: every note bounces, your hand light, as if the keys were hot. Click “Listen first” to hear the sound you’re going for.
You know p (piano, soft) and f (forte, loud). Between them, and beyond them, there’s a whole palette:
To move from one to another: crescendo (cresc., or a long hairpin < opening up under the staff) means louder and louder; decrescendo or diminuendo (decresc., dim., or a long hairpin > closing up) means softer and softer. Don’t confuse it with the little > of an accent, placed over a single note.
Why this way: In Jaques-Dalcroze eurhythmics, you also show dynamics with your body: small gestures for piano, big gestures for forte. Try it: sing a phrase in a crescendo while slowly raising your arm, then play it.
The right key, with the right dynamic. With a MIDI keyboard, the app measures how hard you strike the keys (for a crescendo or a decrescendo, it checks the last note). With the mouse or the computer keyboard, it can’t hear that: play the right notes and imagine the dynamic.
Au clair de la lune in full, with its middle section: give each part its own character. The computer follows your notes; the color is up to you! Measures 1 to 4: mf, legato. Measures 5 to 8: p, like an echo. Measures 9 to 12: staccato, in a crescendo. Measures 13 to 16: legato, in a decrescendo all the way to the end.