A slur is a symbol in Western

musical notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proce ...

indicating that the notes it embraces are to be played without separation (that is, with legato 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, but that does not have to be straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point. This is the definition that ...

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

Slurs mean different things for different instruments: *For bowed

string instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

s, the notes should be played in one

bow stroke BOW as an acronym may refer to: * Bag of waters, amniotic sac * Bartow Municipal Airport (IATA:BOW), a public use airport near Bartow, Florida, United States * Basic operating weight of an aircraft * BOW counties, made of Brown, Outagamie, and ...

. * For

plucked string instrument Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the string (music), 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 ...

s, such as

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

s, the notes should be played without plucking the individual strings ( hammer-ons and pull-offs). * 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 pitch ...

s, the notes should be played without re-articulating each note ( tonguing), except for the slide trombone (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, slurs are usually used to mark notes which are sung to a single

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

( melisma). 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.

References

{{Musical notation Articulations (music) Musical notation es:Legato

Performance

See also

References