Italian terms for guitar articulations like "hammer on"

[CableChannel]

Hey there,

for an orchestra, strings, piano, whatever, there are italian terms to describe the articulation, like legato, staccato, you name it. For the classical guitar it seems to be english only. Slide, hammer on, and the like. Are italian expressions just not used for this?

[Tricky-Loops]

Classical music in Europe starts in the Renaissance which was pretty influenced by Italian composers, that's why they imported all these Italian terms in classical music.

The guitar had its greatest time especially in Rock 'n Roll which came from the USA. That's why there are mostly English terms, and as far as I know they use English guitar playing terms in Italy, too.

[Tricky-Loops]

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitarra

[jancivil]

I've no idea why you think 'legato' or 'staccato' isn't used to say what they mean in 'classical guitar'. If you're discussing a staccato dot in the sheet music I think the word 'staccato' is pretty average lingo.

however 'slurs' is used typically to mean you hammer on or pull off to arrive at a note you don't pluck. (it's obviously not going to be staccato but more or less legato or *connected*.) 'slurs' rather than 'hammer on/pull off'. So I think as a generality, rock guitar is not the driver of the lingo. even something like a scratch slide seemingly borrowed from rock practice would tend to read 'gliss' in the score, in my experience.

[CableChannel]

So I guess in the renessaince era either the knowledge that legato or trills are done using hammer-ons was just taught to the students but not written in the compositions. Would be interesting how they noted a slide, though.

Only italian (?) term that comes to mind is the barre. Or is that french?

Anyway, the reason why I asked is that I want to create an expression map for a guitar, and Cubase does not offer "hammer on". So I thought maybe there was an italian term for this. But it seems not, so I will just create the english term in the map.

[Tricky-Loops]

Here is an interesting book from 1640 by one of the first Italian guitarists, Giovanni Paolo Foscarini:

http://api.ning.com/files/AUlKIEswx4utr ... ni2011.pdf

I guess for the CLASSICAL guitar in Renaissance & Baroque they used pretty common Italian terms...

[Nystul]

In thinking about this, the difference makes sense to me. Legato, for example, is a musical idea. Smoothly flowing and connected. It is a higher level of language than technical devices. The composer need not be concerned with exactly how you achieve the effect as long as it sounds legato. Technically this means such different things to a violin player compared to a clarinet compared to a piano. On each instrument there might be slightly different ways to achieve the result, with different pros and cons. We might discuss the technical details in English jargon but those terms are incorporated into the score less often. The further back you go, the more vague scores were and the more that musicians had to rely on their own training and judgment.

[woggle]

I would not worry about it all that much - use whatever words you feel comfortable with. There are all sorts of ways of scoring music - but this page is very sensible about scoring some basic techniques http://www.musicianwages.com/music-notation-for-guitar/

[BertKoor]

Anyway, the reason why I asked is that I want to create an expression map for a guitar, and Cubase does not offer "hammer on".

Well, notation is not the strongest point of Cubase anyway. Maybe that explains it

[jancivil]

The composer need not be concerned with exactly how you achieve the effect as long as it sounds legato.

No, the composer writing specifically for classical needs to know what happens with the guitarist's hands, whether or not the move is feasible in the first place, and how a guitarist phrases. Plucking the note gives an emphasis that a slur never can. Watch a Julian Bream master class where he specifies slurs for phrasing, for instance. Same for clarinet, the note is articulated at the mouthpiece or it is slurred, a new note is fingered but not mouthed. Violin, a slur is not re-bowed. The composer has to know what happens. There may be some differences in actual execution, cf., transcription to another instrument etc, but to say 'as long as it sounds legato' leaves too much off.


I like the 'higher level of language'; legato means a connected phrase but 'hammer-on/pull off' aka 'slur' is a specific type of technique producing a particular sound. Both are notated by the same curved line, but you'd place the slurs within the phrasing curved line, generally.


Cubase expression maps are going to be useful insofar as it maps to a specific instrument. It's pretty limited. I don't have any fancy classical guitar library, the one I have in VSL SE Percussion is just a matter of the articulation 'perf. legato'. I don't think there are any that truly take into account the full technique.
And these maps, while having a sort of basic default are user-defined. A printed score is such another matter from a useful sequence, I would advise to not be terrifically focused on this, it's a matter of a keyswitch and know what the articulation does.

[jancivil]

So I guess in the renessaince era either the knowledge that legato or trills are done using hammer-ons was just taught to the students but not written in the compositions. Would be interesting how they noted a slide, though.

well, when you get to Baroque ornamentation there is a trill that emulates a harpsichord or other keyboard trill you might need to pluck every note, you might mix them. This was improvisational, these ornaments, in the first place. This kind of [notated] distinction was not a property of the period, let alone previous 'renaissance' period.

for instance look at some John Dowland. Lute is not a terrifically 'legato' style instrument anyway. You aren't going to see 'slides' notated, or probably even referred to in literature. That is a property of later approaches and expression.

A composer needs to know the instrument composed for. But this old music was not notated to specify these niceties to the same goal, or effect. There is a whole study of ornamentation practice and literature and quite a few markings to indicate, but there are ins and outs of this that aren't set in stone exactly. You get back to lute and you're plucking about every note really. CF: there is no 'slur' on a keyboard.