Can you not Slur notes of the same pitch?
Is this true? I can't help but feel it is not?
a slur does not connect two or more notes of the same pitch
Source: easypianobasics.com/ties-and-slurs/
Kind of makes sense, you may wish to only 'smoothly' play notes that are not of the same pitch, but it could be said that you could want to Slur notes that are of the same pitch, no?
Take this example (last few bars of Elgar's Nimrod, so sorry for the poor qual)
These could easily pass as Slurred because they are over the notes with the stem down and under the notes with the stem up with an exception of the Cello because I think this is overcrowding?
How would he distinguish between a Slur and a Tie here? Or maybe that's the point? You just can't Slur two or more notes of the same pitch - but you may wish to play them this way as if they were Slurred (smoothly, if I wanted a better word :-).
How then would you notate this?
EDIT: Notice the Fermata too on the rest right at the end, that's strange. To prevent the audience from clapping right at the end of the piece, who knows? :-)
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Given that it happens in all voices and all notes, it seems pretty clear, that a tie is intended here. Since the desired note length exceeds one bar and a decrescendo is intended thoughout, this is the obvious notation for it.
The fermata on the last rest of course relates on a short wait to the next of the Enigma variations and so contrasts with an attacca.
Take it with a grain of salt. Any resources described as easy, basic, for dummies, in 24 hours etc. will - by their nature - oversimplify and generalize, skip any subtleties. Often they will also be plain wrong - due to their economics.
Scores are a form of notation meant for humans, not for machines. Which is why we still don't have a computer program that would be able to transcribe a midi file into a reasonably looking score.
So, there is no music-police which would forbid you from having a two-note slur. But any composer writing such a slur would immediately know that it will likely be misunderstood by the reader - and would try to add some hints: dots under the notes, or even just writing "this is a slur, not a tie" underneath (yes, that's allowed!).
Tell me with a straight face that the slurs connecting notes of equal pitch are to be played as ties in this excerpt from the Chaconne in Bach's Partita #2 for Solo Violin.
Note that this is played across several strings and the string distribution is indicated by stems pointing in different directions (there are 3 groups of 4 16th notes each per measure). The "ties" are not even on the same string.
When the writer wants the music played with separated notes, he'll write staccato marks. Otherwise, the expected way is to 'join up' the notes, rather like we speak with words that follow each other without breaks in between. That's 'slurred'. On some instruments it's possible to leave no gap at all between notes, on piano, each succeeding note will have to be played again, even if it's the same note.
Ties (which these are) will only join two notes that are the same pitch and letter name. Often they get used, as here, to make notes longer, over bar lines. Obviously, the second note just carries on sounding - it doesn't get played again. easy to sustain on piano with the damper or sostenuto pedal.
Usually, a line over several notes will be a slur, meaning all those notes are played 'in one breath', in a single phrase. If they were all the same notes, there would be one line over all of them (however many), and one line can only mean slur, because, as said earlier, a tie can only join two notes. Slurs - I've never seen a slur that joined only two notes, that were themselves identical. But a good question nevertheless.
Phrasing vs extended durations. You understand whether is by context and rhetoric.
In the example you give, it's a tie. Period.
There's a thing called 'portato'. Sustained but articulated. On a violin, the bow stays on the string but each note is given a 'push' (for want of a better term). Wind instruments can emulate this. It even gets written for piano, where it indicates a musical intention rather than a specific technique.
So far as I'm concerned, the one and only difference between a tie and a slur is the absence or presence of pitch change. After all, a slur instructs you to effectively make the pitch transition in a way that the only thing that takes place is such transition.
Because of this, there is no need to make any additional distinction in notation, as the two are easy to tell from one another by looking at the vertical position of the notes involved.
I use Lilypond for music engraving. This software basically translates a description written in a specific language into a part. It will issue a warning (or an error, I can't remember which) if you describe a tie between notes with different pitches. The curved line drawn by the software is similar but not the exact same, though (see comment below).
If it connects two same notes, it’s probably a tie.
But as with almost any general rule, there are (rare) counterexamples. Specifically, there are instances where it looks like a tie but the notes are to be played separate (first picture below). Also, there are instances (like in a modulation) in which one might tie two notes with different letter names, but that are enharmonically equivalent (second picture below).
Beethoven’s 31st piano sonata, 3rd movement, 5th measure
Beethoven’s 27th piano sonata, 2nd movement, just before the final key signature change
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