What's new

Legato VS. Sustain

Legato is a connected note, so it’s sampled with the “slide” connection to the next note, or it’s done electronically, where a sustain note has no connection to the next note. On a sampled instrument usually legato patches only play one note at a time, with the connection, where sustains can play many notes at a time because they don’t have to worry about which note it’s connecting to.

I really like Afflatus Strings because it has Poly legato, where you can play many notes at once and the instrument figures out which notes will connect to which next notes. I hope more developers will add polylegato.
 
X-Bassist has already said it - connected notes are also called legato notes.
In the case of strings, this means that the bow continues to bow (in the same direction) while you "press" a new note with your fingers on the fingerboard. This results in a sound between the notes, which is the typical legato sound. If the bow's direction is changed for each note, the sustain articulation is created (interrupted note sound).

Compare the score with the sound...

The sign above the 1st C-note means downstroke with the bow (for the rest of the bar) and the V above the E means upstroke with the bow.
strarrpart3melosoloviolscore.gif

With wind instruments, we speak of legato notes if the individual notes are not also "separated" with the tongue on the mouthpiece. This means that the wind player blows air continuously into the instrument and presses different notes at the same time. This creates "connecting tones" between the notes, which are typical of legato articulation.
Here is a wind sound legato-example.

Hope this clears your question
Beat
 
@X-Bassist & @Beat Kaufmann: you both win the award tonight for best Legato explanation of 2024. I'm not necessarily a noob (worse actually, overly curious hobbiest) and if I had to truly define legato, I'm not sure it would even be a scratch on the itch the way you both defined it here. Huge thanks. I'm copying both answers to my notes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rAC
Top Bottom