tie
A curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch, combining their durations.
In Depth
A tie joins two adjacent notes of the same pitch into a single sustained sound. The second note is not rearticulated — its duration is simply added to the first. A quarter note tied to another quarter note sounds like a half note, but the tie notation is necessary when the combined duration crosses a bar line or doesn't fit a single note value.
Ties are essential for creating rhythmic patterns that don't align with bar lines. Syncopated rhythms frequently use ties to sustain notes across beats. Ties also allow notes to last for unusual durations — a quarter note tied to an eighth note creates a dotted-quarter duration. The tie looks identical to a slur (a curved line), but ties always connect notes of the same pitch while slurs connect different pitches.
The distinction between a tie and a slur has confused music students for centuries — some older editions of music are ambiguous about which is intended, leading to genuine performance debates.