Articulation (music) facts for kids
Articulation in music is all about how a single musical note or sound is played. It's like how you say words – some sounds are short and sharp, others are smooth and connected. Articulation mainly controls how a note begins and ends. It also affects how long a note sounds and how its sound starts and fades away. Articulation can even change a note's sound quality (called timbre), how loud it is (its dynamics), and its pitch.
Think of musical articulation like speaking clearly. In the past, especially during the Baroque and Classical music times, musicians learned about articulation by comparing it to public speaking.
Today, Western music has a set of common articulation marks that became standard in the 1800s. Composers often use these, but they can also create new ways to play notes if their music needs it. When making electronic or computer music, composers can even design brand new articulations from scratch!
Composers give instructions for articulation in their music, but musicians also choose how to play the notes. They decide based on their own understanding of the music. Before the 1600s, composers rarely wrote down articulation marks. Even during the Baroque period, they were not very common, leaving it up to the musician. Today, articulation marks are more standardized. Still, musicians think about the style of the music, how it was played when it was written, and their own ideas when performing.
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Types of Articulations
There are many kinds of articulation. Each one changes how a note is played. In music notation, common articulation marks include the slur, phrase mark, staccato, staccatissimo, accent, sforzando, rinforzando, and legato. Each articulation has a special symbol placed above or below the note.
| Tenuto | Hold the note for its full length, or even a little longer. It can also mean to play the note slightly louder. |
| Marcato | Play this note or group of notes louder or with more force than the notes around it. |
| Staccato | Play the note shorter than its written length, making it sound detached or separate. |
| Legato | Play or sing the notes smoothly and connected, without any breaks between them. |
The third movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (often called the "Pastoral" symphony) shows how well you can use both staccato and legato in the same part of the music. Listen to how the notes are sometimes short and sometimes smooth:
Changing how a musical idea is articulated can help a piece of music grow and develop. For example, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture starts with a smooth, connected (legato) melody:
Later in the piece, this same melody comes back, but this time it's played short and detached (staccato). This shows how Mendelssohn develops his musical ideas:
How Articulations Are Made
Brass and Woodwind Instruments
Players of woodwind and brass instruments usually create articulations by tonguing. This means using their tongue to briefly stop or start the airflow into the instrument.
To help students learn articulations, teachers often use different syllables. For example, saying "dah" can show where to place the tongue for a basic articulation. For most notes, using the very tip of the tongue works best. However, different articulation marks need different tongue positions. Smooth, connected parts might use a tongue movement like saying "la," while strong, sharp notes might be played with a "tah" sound.
Sometimes, musicians need to play many articulations very quickly. For this, they might use "double-tonguing." You can practice this by quickly repeating "dig" and "guh," or "tuh" and "kuh." This technique uses both the tip of the tongue (behind the front teeth) and the back of the tongue (against the roof of the mouth). Double-tonguing is mostly used by brass players, but woodwind players are starting to use it more often too.
There's also a less common way to articulate for wind players called "doodle tonguing." The name comes from the "doodle" sound you might make while doing it. To doodle tongue, you move the tip of your tongue up and down quickly. This briefly blocks the air stream on the way up and again on the way down.
String Instruments
String instruments use different methods to create articulations. These include bowing (for instruments like violins), picking (for guitars), or plucking the strings with the hand, which is called pizzicato. Musicians change the speed, pressure, and angle of their bow or pick to get different articulations.
For example, to play legato (smooth and connected), string players let the string vibrate without stopping it. This makes the notes flow into each other. Staccato is the opposite. The player plucks, bows, or picks the note and then immediately stops it from vibrating. This makes the note much shorter than normal.
While duration (how long a note lasts) is a big part of articulation, it's not the only thing. Articulation also affects how loud a note is, its sound quality (timbre), how in tune it is, and how its sound starts and fades. When you see an accent mark (a triangle without its base) above a note, it means to play it louder and with more force. A string musician would do this by playing the string harder.
Combined Articulations
Sometimes, different articulation marks are used together to create special sounds. For example, when staccato marks are combined with a slur, it creates a sound called portato. This is also known as "articulated legato" because the notes are slightly separated but still connected. For bowed string instruments, tenuto marks under a slur are sometimes called "hook bows."
Apagados
Apagados (which means "muted" in Spanish) refers to notes that are played dampened or "muted," so they don't ring out. This term is written above or below the notes, with a dotted or dashed line showing which notes should be played this way. This technique is mainly used for instruments that are bowed or plucked.
On the guitar, this effect is often called a "palm mute." The musician gently rests the palm of their hand on the strings near the bridge and then plucks the strings, usually with their thumb. This makes the notes sound short and muffled. The composer Gerardo de Altona used apagados in his music for the Spanish guitar.
See Also
In Spanish: Articulación (música) para niños
- List of musical symbols: Articulation Marks
- Prosody (music)
- Tonguing
