Staccato
A staccato dot above or below a note head means play it short and detached — roughly half its written length, with silence filling the rest.
Staccato is about separation, not about hitting the key harder. The note still has whatever dynamic is marked; it simply stops early.
How To Spot Staccato
A dot directly above or below the note head. A dot to the right of the head is a dotted note, which means the opposite.
Find It In Thirty Seconds
Play a line of quarter notes legato, then staccato, with the same volume. The only thing that should change is how long each note lasts.
Open any piece of sheet music on this site and do it now. Reading is a recognition skill, and recognition is built by finding things, not by reading about them.
Related Topics...
How to Read Sheet Music: Learn how to read sheet music using interactive lessons from Chordzy. Or browse our various reading music topics.
Music Notation Glossary: Every symbol on a page of piano music, explained in one sentence each — clefs, note values, rests, accidentals, dynamics and repeat marks.
Accent: An accent (>) above or below a note means play that note louder than the ones around it.
Dotted Note: A dot after a note head adds half of that note's value again. A dotted half note lasts three beats; a dotted quarter lasts one and a half.
Legato: Legato means play smoothly and connected, with each note lasting until the next one begins.
Slur: A slur is a curved line over a group of notes at different pitches, meaning play them smoothly and connected as one phrase.
More in This Section
Staff: The staff is the set of five horizontal lines that piano music is written on. A note's vertical position on those lines and the spaces between them tells you w…
Tempo Marking: A tempo marking is the word or metronome number at the top of a piece saying how fast to play it — Andante, Allegro, or something like ♩ = 96.