Hello!

I’m a self-thought advanced beginner and I’m struggling with appoggiatura notes (or grace, or accent notes). They are slided mostly by me, or I just cut the air stream and begin the main note. I have heard them played by professionals and they sound differen: much faster and beautiful.

I have looked from Youtube and other Google- provided tutorials, but I have not found anything, that would help me.

Can anybody please cut mu miseryes and explain the tongue and air flow work, or maybe even sheer some excercise videos.

Sincerely

It depends. Sometimes a nice effect is to do a kind of lip trill effect (just start on lower note, and lip slur and and back down once very quickly in the same position) if the tempo is fast and the sheet music calls for two grace notes and then back to the original note. If it's slower, or one note, a legato is usually the way.

If you can go across a natural break or a partial on the horn, you can just use your lips, no tongue. For example, C above the staff to Bb. You can flip fom C to Bb without the tongue quickly to do a single grace note, or Bb C Bb for double. It takes a combination of some practice and hearing it done the right way a couple of times. Practice lip slurs and lip trills.

I guess I'm not sure I understand the question. There are lots of things loosely referred to as appoggiaturas. In the classic baroque period appoggiatura, what's marked as a grace note is played on the beat from above the target note, with emphasis, and basically divides the target note value in half, with the appoggiatura getting as much duration as the actual note it modifies. I don't see why anyone would have difficulty playing that kind of appoggiatura.

Modernly, people call all manner of things appoggiaturas. It's now basically a generic term encompassing several types of note modifications, and they can be fast or slow, on or before the beat, above or below the target note, or even a mordent or a gruppetto/turn.

But with any of them, I typically lip slur between the notes if at all possible, keeping the air flowing and not using my tongue.

Figuring out where the extra notes are going to go rhythmically can make the technique snap into place a lot more easily. There are only so many beats in a measure and those little extra notes have to take value either from the note preceding or following them.

If a few times you write out what a passage would look like with the grace notes or appoggiaturas written as they will be played rhythmically by you, you’ll start to see it automatically.

The technique will always get sketchy when the sense of time disappears.

Waiting for grammar police to correct appoggiatura to acciaccatura in 3, 2, 1,................

In a short chanted section of the Episcopal service, there is a mordent that is sung as a grace note to the next tone. I've wondered if that is standard notation practice for vocal music? It's not just one congregation that does it that way.