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Topic: whats grace notes? (Read 4470 times) previous topic - next topic

whats grace notes?

could someone plz tell me what's a grace note? I am not good at musical terms in english. thanks

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #1 –
There are three types of grace notes.
taken from the italian:

appoggiatura-notation:a reduced size eighth note slurred to a normal size main note-the grace note and the main note are both played in the time allotted to the main note and very strongly slurred--in modern usage the accaciatura takes one half the time
accaciatura-notation:a reduced size eighth note with a slash on the stem slurred to a normal size main note-the grace note and the main note are both played in the time allotted to the main note and very strongly slurred--in modern usage the accaciatura takes one fourth the time
double appoggiatura (appogiatura doppia)-notation:two reduced size eighth notes beamed and slurred to a normal size main note-the grace notes and the main note are all played in the time allotted to the main note and very strongly slurred--in modern usage the double appogiatura takes half the time with the two of equal duration

in most current music the grace note is slurred to the note following, history is not so consistent..

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #2 –
But there are other instances of grace notes.
Three grace notes are used by Mozart in his Rondo "Alla Turca" from Sonata XI. Again, they borrow time from the note being "graced".
Liszt, Moussorgsky and Gershwin and many others make huge use of grace notes as leading arpeggios to the "graced" note. These normally end up with the graced note being ON the beat (ie the grace notes borrow from the preceding note).
This is impossible to implement in NWC at the moment without resorting to using an "implementation" stave. ie you have one (mute) staff that looks right, and one messy (hidden) staff that plays right.

So the grace note is in high demand! I wish its implementation was general enough to allow either method scope. However, I understand that it may be very awkward to implement the latter.

Andrew

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #3 –
.oops..
fourth line in my effort above should have ended
--in modern usage the APPOGGIATURA takes one half the time
sorry

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #4 –
Grace notes are small notes used to indicate musical embellishments and drawing their rythmic value from the note to which they are attached. See turns, trills, and all the technical terms mentioned above.

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #5 –
I still don't really understand what grace notes are meant
to be. What it means to me is that now I can put little
notes on my score. In vocal music, little notes are used to
fill in extra notes when some lyric lines have more syllables than others, or for optional notes.

Of course, this use violates the intention of grace notes.
(When you add a feature to software, it gets used in ways
the author never intended.) Problems I have are:

1) A grace note entered between two tied notes picks up
the tie. Correct, I suppose, but not what I want.

2) I can add a grace note to a chord, but it does not
display properly. The stem is detached from the note. This
is a bug.

Ideally, I would like to add these little notes and have them ignored except visually. If other vocal music users feel the same way, maybe an option to do this could be added.
 

Re: whats grace notes?

Reply #6 –
which of the grace notes comes before the beat?
one is played before the note, one is played during the notes' time value
If this makes any sense to anyone, pls reply.