Ties & Slurs

Say you want a note to last a length that no single note value can show. Music has a neat fix: draw a little curved line from that note to another one of the same pitch, right next to it. That curve is a tie.

A tie means play the first note, then keep holding it straight through the second. You do not play the second note again. The two become one longer sound, their lengths added together.

Sing "aah" for four counts, then keep the very same "aah" going for one more without starting over. That unbroken five-count hold is what a tie does.

The tie exists because note values are a fixed menu of durations, and music often needs a length that no single symbol on that menu provides. Joining two notes of one pitch lets their durations add, so any total the writer needs can be assembled from the standard pieces.

Its one hard requirement is that the joined notes share a pitch, because a tie extends time and nothing else. No new sound begins at the second notehead; it is there only to lengthen the first. That is the whole difference between a tie and the slur coming up in Part 3, which links different pitches for a different reason.

The handiest thing a tie does is carry a note across a bar line. Bar lines chop music into measures, but sometimes a note needs to ring right through one. A tie lets it.

You write the note at the end of one measure, tie it to a note at the start of the next, and hold straight through the bar line as if it were not there. The sound sails across while your counting rolls into the new measure.

Count "three, four" holding a note, then keep holding it for "one, two" in the next measure. One long sound, two measures, thanks to the tie.

Ties resolve a conflict between two notation rules. A sound may need to continue across a bar line, yet every full measure must contain exactly the beats its meter allows and notes are not written straddling the line. The tie lets one sound span the boundary while each measure stays correctly filled on the page.

The same rule explains ties used inside a measure. Beaming and beat-grouping conventions exist to show where the pulse falls, so a syncopated figure is often written as tied notes rather than one long value, keeping the beats visible beneath the sustained sound. The notation stays honest to the meter even while the rhythm floats above it.

Now a curve that looks just like a tie but does a different job. Draw a curved line over a run of notes that are not the same pitch, and it becomes a slur. A slur means play these notes smoothly, moving from one to the next with no gap between them.

Smooth and connected like this has a name: legato. Under a slur, the notes hold hands. There is no little silence between them, no fresh chop of the tongue or the bow; the line just flows.

Sing "la-la-la" up a few notes with tiny stops between each. Now sing the same notes as one smooth "laaaa," stepping to each new note without stopping the sound. That second, smooth version is a slur.

A slur is about motion: it joins changing pitches into one continuous line. On the page it marks where that connection begins and ends, and every instrument has its own way of realizing it, but the written instruction is the same: let these pitches arrive as one unbroken gesture.

Slurs can also carry a larger meaning. A long slur often outlines a phrase, the musical equivalent of a spoken clause, marking where a line of thought opens and closes. In string parts, though, most slurs are bowings that show which notes share one bow, and a single phrase often spans several of them.

Here is the catch that trips people at first: a tie and a slur are drawn with the same curved line. So how do you tell them apart? Look at the notes the curve connects.

If the curve joins two notes that are the same pitch, it is a tie, and you hold. If it joins notes at different pitches, it is a slur, and you play them smoothly. Same pitch means hold; different pitches means connect.

Point at a curve in some music. Does it join just two notes, side by side, on the same line or space, with no new sharp or flat? Tie. Does it reach over notes that move to other lines or spaces? Slur.

One shape carrying two meanings could be a source of confusion, but the two rarely overlap: a tie joins two neighboring notes of one pitch and a slur covers notes that change pitch, so the notes themselves settle which is meant. Context does the work a second symbol would otherwise do.

Both express connection, on different axes. A tie joins a pitch to itself across time; a slur joins different pitches across a line. The first binds duration, the second binds articulation, and in both the curve says that these notes belong together, leaving the pitches to say in which sense.

Once you can spot slurs, you start to see the shape of a song. Long slurs often group notes into phrases, little musical sentences, and a piece breathes between them, the way you pause between spoken sentences.

Phrasing means shaping each phrase as one idea: a gentle lift into the middle, an ease off at the end, then a tiny breath before the next. Shaped this way, a melody sounds like it is saying something.

Sing a line you know and lift your hands, or take a small breath, wherever it feels like one thought ends and the next begins. You are finding the phrases.

Phrasing is where these curves become expression. A phrase is a unit of musical sense, and a performer shapes it much as a speaker shapes a sentence, growing toward a focal point and easing at the close before drawing breath for the next. A long slur over a phrase marks where that shape begins and ends, and where the slurs are short bowings, the player finds the phrase across several of them.

Ties feed the same picture from the side of duration, sustaining a pitch to bind a gesture together or to hold tension across a bar line. Between them, ties and slurs let notation record the line as well as the notes: the connected motion that organizes pitches and rhythms into phrases a listener can follow.