Lesson 15: Slurs and Legato Playing
- Play a group of notes under a single tongue, with no break between them.
- Play a lyrical melody in which the fingers carry the music.
- Lesson 8 — articulation.
- Slurring.
- Legato vs detached lines.
A slur is a sentence. The notes are the words.
A slur over a group of notes asks you to tongue only the first. The rest happen by finger movement alone. The air flows continuously; only the fingerings change. This is the recorder's equivalent of bowed legato — with no separation between adjacent notes — and it transforms a melody from a sequence of arrivals into a single phrase.
Play the line twice. First with too on every note; second with too on the first note of each beat only and the rest slurred.
Each pair of eighth notes is one tongue, two pitches. The fingers must move precisely on the second eighth or the pair sounds smudged.
Play: a lyrical melody
The melody below is built almost entirely of stepwise motion. The slurs — one per phrase — turn it from an exercise into a song.
Tongue the first note of each four-note phrase only. Let the fingers carry the rest.
Now play these
- Go Tell Aunt Rhody
- Play it now with every phrase under a single slur. A different song from the tongued version of Lesson 4.
- Silent Night
- Two-note slurred groupings throughout. The carol's signature texture.
- Molly Malone
- Irish ballad. Long, slurred phrases — one breath per line of text.
When you can play four-eighth-note slurs without smudging, and Aunt Rhody sounds genuinely different slurred than tongued, move on to Lesson 16.