I just bought the "dozen a day" exercise book, some of the notes have a dot underneath the note. What does this indicate?

Thanks,

Marc

Hi marc

A dot under a note means that you have to play the note staccato. It means you have to realese the key real quick and you can't use your sustain padal.

Do not confuse them (like I do sometimes) with a dot next to a note. That means you have to add the half of the value of the note to that note.
If you see a quarter note with a dot next to it you have to play it like a quarter note + eight note.

Dot's right.

The UNDER being capitalized suggests you expected it to be OVER the note, but this only depends if the note is drawn stems up or stems down. Same meaning either way.

Thanks all! I understood what a dot next to a note meant, but didn't know about below (or over, for that matter!).

What does it mean when the dot (staccato) is under a slur?

And, for that matter, please refresh my memory - what does it mean when the dot under/over the note is more of a triangle shape? Thanks!

In works such as the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata 27-2, the triangle shape under/over a note found in the autograph copy and other editions should be interpretted the same as stacatto (not stress). However, I believe it may have other interpretation with different time periods or composers.

Fojae

"slur" indicates playing smoothly which you perhaps can't reconcile with stacatto. However, it's still possible to play smoothly even though the notes are of shorter duration.

Scholes describes Staccato marks (Table 23)

MEZZO-STACATTO (shorten notes by about 1/4)
dots under with horizontal "Phrase" brackets

STACATTO (shorten notes by about 1/2)
dots under

STACATISSIMO (shorten notes by about 3/4)
Triangles replace dots (Beethoven example)

Get out your stop-watches!!