Dynamics & Expression
Mezzo Piano (mp)
Pronounced MET-soh PYAH-nohWritten as mp
Mezzo piano, written mp, means moderately soft: a little louder than piano and a little softer than mezzo forte. Mezzo means 'half' or 'medium' in Italian.
Mezzo piano means "half soft", or moderately soft. Mezzo is Italian for "half" or "medium", and it moves piano a step toward the middle. Its sign is mp, and it sits just above p and just below mf.
The middle of the scale
The two mezzo levels, mp and mf, are the middle of the dynamic ladder, and they are the hardest pair to tell apart. Many players have one comfortable "normal" volume and play both marks at it. To fix that, practice the same phrase at mp and mf back to back, and make the difference clear enough that a listener would notice.
Where mp is used
- A gentle melody that should still be clearly heard.
- An accompaniment under a melody marked mf (see Voicing and Balance for why the accompaniment should sit below the tune).
- The start of a passage that will build with a crescendo, so there is room to grow.
Playing mp
Think of mp as a relaxed, conversational level: soft enough to feel gentle, loud enough that every note carries without effort. Keep the fingertips supported and control the speed of each key's descent rather than trying to stop it partway down. If your mp starts to sound timid, with notes that barely speak, you have slipped down to p; if it sounds confident and projecting, you have drifted up to mf.
Saying it
Musicians usually say "MET-soh" or "MED-zoh" for mezzo. Either way, the double z is not pronounced like the English "zoo".
Find mp on the Dynamic Ladder and in Dynamics & Tempo Ladders; Match the terms: level 2 and the Musical terms & signs chart define it as medium soft.
Common questions
Is mp louder than p?
Yes. Mezzo piano (mp) is moderately soft, a step louder than piano (p) and a step softer than mezzo forte (mf).
Practice it: free worksheets
The Dynamic Laddersix volumes from pp to ff — the full family of loud and soft
Dynamics & tempo laddersLoudness and speed each climb a ladder: pp up to ff, and Largo up to Presto. Put both ladders in order, then read them in music (Handouts 63, 55 and 64).
Match the terms: level 2Draw a line from each term to its meaning. All-new words — rounds one and up are Exercises 08–11. The colors tell you what kind of word it is, but each color has several meanings on the right, so read carefully.
Musical terms & signsThe words and symbols a piano score uses to tell you how loud, how fast and how to play each note. Most of the words are Italian. The colors match the term-matching exercises (Exercises 08–11, 74 and 75).
Voicing and BalanceThe piano plays many notes at once, but the listener should hear one of them first: the melody. Voicing means choosing which note sings out. Balance means keeping everything else softer underneath it, so the tune floats on top.