Why does music have those curved lines all over it? Some of the curved lines seem to connect two notes while others seem to swoop over the music. What are these and how to we use them.

Some things in music are just plain confusing and this is one of those subjects. These two types of lines are actually very different things. One is a tie and one is a phrase marking.

Let’s start with the easy one. Do you remember what a phrase is? A phrase is a musical sentence. In spoken language, we consider a sentence a complete thought. If we stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, people would look at us funny and in music it works the same way. If we don’t make phrases, music sounds mechanical and boring. Those big swooping lines that you sometimes see that connect multiple measures of music are phrase markings. The composer is showing you what he or she considers to be a phrase or a complete musical thought.

In newer music, music copyists have figured out that these phrase marks are easily confused with slur marks so phrase marks are slowly going away. More and more, musicians are being left to figure out the phrases on their own.

There are other lines that connect notes together. These are called ties. A tie connects two notes of the same pitch. What makes ties slightly more confusing is the fact that you don’t replay the second note of the tie. The note simply sustains through it. Let’s pretend that you have a quarter tied to another quarter note. You would play the first quarter note and let the note sustain through the second quarter note. (Remember to count through it, though)

You might be wondering, “why write two quarter notes tied together if you could just write a half note instead”? That’s a great question and sometimes, it’s simply the preference of the composer but other times it has a real reason. What if the composer had a note starting on beat 4 of a 4/4 measure but they wanted it to sustain for 2 beats. They can’t write a half note because that would be too many beats in the measure. Instead, the composer would write a quarter note and write a tie over the bar line to another quarter note in the next measure. See why ties are important?

It’s also important to note that if you’re a wind or string player, you will also see slurs which are ties that connect notes of different pitches. In this case, you use a special technique called a slur. Different instruments have different techniques for this.

Make sense? Take a look at your music and identify the ties and phrase marks. Not all music will have them but most do. Now you know exactly what they mean and how they affect the music.

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