This tip is for music notation beginners (or for composers who often confuse slurs and ties – like myself!) Recently, while reviewing one of my scores, my instructor at Berklee was commenting that many of my ties and slurs were not clear. Despite my years of composition experience and music theory study, as a self-taught musician, I must admit that I am very weak in certain notation areas – including this one.  As I am now working on larger orchestral pieces, I’ve really had to clean up many of my bad habits.

The reason slurs and ties can be confusing is because, they look pretty much identical on a score, but they serve very different purposes. The quick summary (thanks to Ben, my instructor):

Ties are used when you want to connect two notes of the same pitch. This turns these two notes into one (longer) note (spanning a greater length of time). Below is an example of a tie:

Slurs are used when you want to “blend” together notes of different pitches. This will create a legato performance. Below is an example of a slur:

Hopefully this very simple explanation/illustration was some help!

• oboe and muted trumpet
• all woodwinds and French horn
• woodwinds and pizzicato strings
• woodwind trills and tremolo strings
• flute and harp
• clarinet and viola
• English horn and upper range of cello
• bassoon, tuba, cello, and bass

http://www.dolmetsch.com/theoryintro.htm