Re: mezzo staccato

[Graham Percival]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 10:20:53AM +0000, James Lowe wrote:
> Hiapeng,
> 
> >In my theory book, a mezzo staccato is a line plus staccato. But I
> >don't know whether c4-.-- does this correctly.

This works, as does
  c4-_

> If the notes are tied I just used something like
> 
> c4-.( c4-. c4-.)
> 
> And again that seems to be understood by them.

Off the top of my head, I would play:
  c4-.( c4-. c4-.)
with something like 30% of the note duration as rests.  If you
wanted less space (say, 5-10%) between the notes, I suggest:
  c4--( c4-- c4--)
That said, the -- case wouldn't raelly be played with rests... you
would play a note with normal bow pressure, then dramatically
reduce the bow pressure for the final part of the note.  The
overall effect would be that there was a "gap" between the notes,
but the bow would keep moving and the bow would still be in
contact with the string.


However, this is not a well-defined area of music; it will depend
on the style of music, the composer, on what the conductor tells
the musicians, etc.

Cheers,
- Graham