Lesson 26: Ornamentation Basics — Grace Notes

• Play an appoggiatura and an acciaccatura, and hear the difference.
• Add a grace note to a melody where the style invites it.

• Lessons 11 and 21 — cross-fingerings and keysigs.

• Grace notes.
• Appoggiatura.
• Coulé (slid grace).

Ornament is not decoration. It is melody made local.

A grace note is a small note that decorates a larger one. There are two kinds you will see often: the appoggiatura (a long lean before the main note, taking half its value) and the acciaccatura (a crushed, instantaneous flash before the main note). Both are written as small notes with stems — the slash through the stem distinguishes the acciaccatura.

Appoggiatura — a lean

The appoggiatura takes half the value of the note it ornaments. A grace note before a quarter actually plays as two eighths: the grace, then the main note. It is a leaning dissonance that resolves.

Acciaccatura — a crush

The acciaccatura is fast and percussive: it borrows a fraction of a beat from nowhere — it plays just before the main note, sometimes simultaneously with the beat the main note arrives on. Less leaning, more flicker.

Play: an ornamented melody

An Irish-style air with a single grace note per phrase — the Celtic ornamentation of choice.

Now play these

Danny Boy

Irish air. Add a grace note before each phrase peak.

The Blackbird

Slow Irish hornpipe. Built around grace-note ornaments.

The Minstrel Boy

A martial Irish ballad. Grace notes on the stronger downbeats.

When you can place one appoggiatura at the cadence of Danny Boy three times in a row without rushing the resolution — the grace eighth held its full half of the beat, the main note arriving exactly on beat — move on to Lesson 27.