grace notes in standard notation

[jaytee]

lately ive been playing around with standard notation...learning to read music was always a goal of mine...and i know a few of you guys read music already so im hoping someone will be able to help me out....
after experimenting with a few riffs...i decided to take on a whole song...i thought i picked one that wasnt too hard...not too long...4/4 time ...standard tuning...etc....
problem is i got towards the end and realized there was something i didnt understand...i think they might be grace notes...but im not sure and i couldnt find them in the notation key....
they are printed much smaller than the other notes on the staff and they have "ties" to notes around them....
i found something similar in an old issue of guitar player today...but they gave a few different ways to play them....
one was like a pulloff and one was like a slide and one was like a bend....so how do i know which technique to use? or is it just up to me to decide what i like? or am i totally off base here?

tia
--jt

[The Fury]

I think I can help you. This is called an acciaccatura (meaning a crushed note), crushed, because you have to play the note(s) as fast as possible before the next regular note.

The ties are called slurs and this means you have to play the notes smoothly, so either use a hammer on or a slide. If you know the song well it's quite easy to determine which one to use.

I hope that helps.

[jaytee]

thanks fury....i think it helps for THIS song...but if i decided to try one i didnt have a audio copy of...i think id be in trouble....i guess id just have to make it up....

if anyone else has any tips or ideas id appreciate them...

--jt

[The Fury]

Well you know they're supposed to be played as fast as possible and for this instance they're to be played with a legato feel (smoothly) that's all you really need, whether its a hammer on, pull off slide is down to a couple of things:
a)what kind of sound do you want?
b)is it possible to slide or do you need to hammer on (or vice versa)?
c)does it matter, cos it's so fast the sound will be (almost) the same.
d)are you actually able to make the position changes fast enough for a hammer on or would a slide be easier?
e)if it isn't legato then you don't have to worry about any of this.

That might not be the answer you wanted, but I thought about some of my favorite peices of classical music and how they're played differently by every orchestra (after all they've only got the sheet music to go on). I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, just play what you want.

[jaytee]

i was looking for some other examples in other pieces...and i noticed that slides have slightly different notation....looks more like a slash than a tie...in those other examples anyways...
there werent any of those marks in this piece...so im thinking it is all hammers and pull offs...and yeah it does seem like those are the most likely options ...so im gonna go with it....
thanks for the advice :)

--jt

[Josh Redstone]

I dont know of other song examples, but what the Fury explaineds is the classical guitar view of grace notes. Those are called grace notes in rock and everything else modern.
You must subtract the value of the time it took to sound the first little note(played much faster than normal) from the larger note its attached to with a slur. Its hard to explain over the web. Just listen to the Fury. He explained it better than I did.

[jaytee]

do you mean that the "crushed note" takes up a portion of the time of whatever the "regular" note would have been?

this is something i hadnt really thought about....since i havent really gotten this piece "up to speed" yet....im still in pretty early stages of playing it....mostly was doing some brain work...but of course in the end i want to play it and be able to recognize it for what it is...lol...

--jt

[Josh Redstone]

It works like this. I could have an eighth note cue size note tied to a regular eighth note. I would play the grace note(indicated by a cue sixe note) for like, a quarter of the time it would take to play a regular 8th note and then the regular note for the rest of the time. It takes some explaining. I would see a music teacher about it. They can explain it better than I can.

[jaytee]

no im pretty sure i understand what you mean....both notes together would equal the original 8th note time...makes sense to me...thanks

heck i wish i had a teacher...maybe id feel like i had some direction....its ok tho...ill just do what i can on my own and maybe some day ill go find a teacher....thats life for ya...


--jt

[eische]

aaarrgh, I have a vocabulary problem her, but I know quite well, what you discribed there (in german it's called Vorschlag)...

...so the bow to the next real (big) note doesn't indicate a legato, but just the connection to this and no other note...
...the little note should be played tremolo-like before hitting the real note, because it's a sort of decoration...
...that's why you don't really care for length in this case, the beat is connected just to the big notes, the sound of the little one comes inbetween, or better quickly before the note it is bound to (just like a tremolo, where you don't count the beat of each note hit, but just the length of the whole effect)...
...you play the song first without that note to get the beat and then add the decoration, making the note it is bound too more complex...


...does that help???

[The Fury]

jaytee, do you have powetrab editor, I can make you a few examples if you like. It's in Tab and Notation and you can play it to hear how it's supposed to sound.

[Josh Redstone]

I dont know how they do it where you live, but I was always tought that when we write tremolo, its a little diagonal line drawn through the flag on the note. If I hade a quarter note with three lines, I would play it as if it were 8 32nd notes.
And the slur thing on grace notes not indicating legato, if you to have a slur in front of a grace note, you must hammer on or pull off. You can have grace note slides and bends too.

[eische]

@ Josh: well, as I said I have a translation-problem here, and I simply don't know what a grace-note is...

...anyway, of course a tremolo is something different, I used that as example to say that is not counted as a real note (I mean, do you really count the whole 8 32th notes there??? - well, me not I count one regular beat and the times I hit the note that's all, because it's so quick), but as a sound added to the one it is bound to...also I never referred to the way this sound is made, that depends on what's standing there - could be the next open string as well as a slide or pull off...

[jaytee]

god you guys were busy posting last night...lol...glad i finally provided a thread that is of some interest...

@ eische....im sure you know what they (grace notes) are, you just havent heard the word before....i read it in a magazine...i hadnt picked it up here...i guess its just another way of naming notes that indicate a technique is to be used like slides and hammers and such...on my sheet music they are printed much smaller than the "normal note" they stand next to and are tied to...and on tab for example if you had a 4h6 then the 4 would be the "grace note" and 6 would be the "normal note"....do you think maybe tremolo could also be indicated by a grace note? i dunno cuz when i look around i see that so many people have their own way of writing things down that sometimes it can be confusing...
...maybe you are right maybe i should try playing it thru without the grace note and then adding it when i get a better feel for it? i dunno but if i have troubles i will do that...i am not so sure that if i were doing my own rendition they would *all* be absolutely necessary anyways...theres alot of them in this song...hmmm...maybe a way to simplify it a bit....if i have to...

@fury ... yes i have ptab but for some reason i cant get it to produce any sound when i hit play...i got ahold of that program over a year ago when someone first posted it here and i dl'ed it but i never could get it working...i thought id give it up for a while until i had more of a use for it....i tried a couple weeks ago again cuz i bought an adapter for my guitar to my puter's mic input...but i get no sound...so i must be missing a driver or something...i dunno....but....no sound from mine...arrrgh....any ideas?



@josh...you bring up another thing i had ignored actually...the slash across the notes flag....lol...wasnt ready to think about that yet....but thanks for the tipoff....


back to work!

--jt

[The Fury]

I couldn't get any sound at first either, try this: Click MIDI on the top bar, then Setup. On the Output tab use the scroll down bar labled Device and then select a different device. O.K it and you should be alright.

As for horizontal lines through the note stem, this indicates the the note shouls be played as many times as possible in the alloted time. It is called Tremolo picking, this might help: Tremolo Picking (http://www.cyberfret.com/techniques/tremolo-picking/index.php)

By the way, if powertab starts to work do you want me to send you some examples?

[jaytee]

ahhhha!
youre right it worked! i now have sound :) thanks!

it would be cool to have some stuff to hear on ptab ....but dont go too far out of your way....it takes me a seriously long time to get around to finding time to practice...i guess thats one reason why im movin so slow as far as how well i play...however...the brainwork end of studying music i think im doing pretty well....its just kinda worked out that way....its all good tho ;)

thanks again

--jt

[eische]

well, the "grace note"-thing...at this point it seems to me that it could be two things: 1 - just another way to say what I would call a decoration or 2 - just the thing you discribed and I would call Vorschlag (pre-hit)..., but anyway, this little noties:

- normally a tremolo is done on the same note (the one with the bar crossing the stem) and the little note is a different one, so they mark different types of decorations
- also these little notes could be shortened by halfmoons, if it is the next wholestep-note you have to play, "(" before the big note will be a whole step down and ")" after the big note will be a whole step up compared to the big real note (maybe you've come across those before?)...

:D yeah, I always think it's useful to get the pure melody first and add the decorations later, because they seem to be optional, you can put them in, leave them out or add some new at different points, just like you want to interpret the phrase...

[The Fury]

Jaytee, I've got a bit of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik if you want it. It got some good example of the techniques (Tremolo and Acciaccatura's) The music notation side of Powertab isn't as great as it could be, but hopefully you'll get the idea.

Send me an email and I'll mail you the tab.

P.S what does Eine Kleine Nachtmusik mean? (if I've even spelt that right)

[eische]

Eine kleine Nachtmusik means: A Little Nightmusic...

...well it's bit ambigue what nightmusic is, could be a song about the night or just a lullaby (as a song for a good-night)...it can also be - and knowing the song, I would always vote for this - some music played at night, say at a party or a ball or just at one of the "salons" of that time...