What is "tone"

Tone \Tone\ (t[=o]n), n. [F. ton, L. tonus a sound, tone, fr. Gr. to`nos a stretching, straining, raising of the voice, pitch, accent, measure or meter, in pl., modes or keys differing in pitch; akin to tei`nein to stretch or strain. See Thin, and cf. Monotonous, Thunder, Ton fashion, Tune.]

1. Sound, or the character of a sound, or a sound considered as of this or that character; as, a low, high, loud, grave, acute, sweet, or harsh tone.

   [Harmony divine] smooths her charming tones.
   --Milton.

   Tones that with seraph hymns might blend.
   --Keble.

2. (Rhet.) Accent, or inflection or modulation of the voice, as adapted to express emotion or passion.

   Eager his tone, and ardent were his eyes.
   --Dryden.

3. A whining style of speaking; a kind of mournful or artificial strain of voice; an affected speaking with a measured rhythm ahd a regular rise and fall of the voice; as, children often read with a tone.

4. (Mus.)

   1. A sound considered as to pitch; as, the seven tones of the octave; she has good high tones.

   2. The larger kind of interval between contiguous sounds in the diatonic scale, the smaller being called a semitone as, a whole tone too flat; raise it a tone.

   3. The peculiar quality of sound in any voice or instrument; as, a rich tone, a reedy tone.

   4. A mode or tune or plain chant; as, the Gregorian tones.

      Note: The use of the word tone, both for a sound and for the interval between two sounds or tones, is confusing, but is common -- almost universal.

      Note: Nearly every musical sound is composite, consisting of several simultaneous tones having different rates of vibration according to fixed laws, which depend upon the nature of the vibrating body and the mode of excitation. The components (of a composite sound) are called partial tones; that one having the lowest rate of vibration is the fundamental tone, and the other partial tones are called harmonics, or overtones. The vibration ratios of the partial tones composing any sound are expressed by all, or by a part, of the numbers in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.; and the quality of any sound (the tone color) is due in part to the presence or absence of overtones as represented in this series, and in part to the greater or less intensity of those present as compared with the fundamental tone and with one another. Resultant tones, combination tones, summation tones, difference tones, Tartini's tones (terms only in part synonymous) are produced by the simultaneous sounding of two or more primary (simple or composite) tones.

5. (Med.) That state of a body, or of any of its organs or parts, in which the animal functions are healthy and performed with due vigor.

   Note: In this sense, the word is metaphorically applied to character or faculties, intellectual and moral; as, his mind has lost its tone.

6. (Physiol.) Tonicity; as, arterial tone.

7. State of mind; temper; mood.

   The strange situation I am in and the melancholy state of public affairs, . . . drag the mind down . . . from a philosophical tone or temper, to the drudgery of private and public business.
   --Bolingbroke.

   Their tone was dissatisfied, almost menacing.
   --W. C. Bryant.

8. Tenor; character; spirit; drift; as, the tone of his remarks was commendatory.

9. General or prevailing character or style, as of morals, manners, or sentiment, in reference to a scale of high and low; as, a low tone of morals; a tone of elevated sentiment; a courtly tone of manners.

10. The general effect of a picture produced by the combination of light and shade, together with color in the case of a painting; -- commonly used in a favorable sense; as, this picture has tone.

11. (Physiol.) Quality, with respect to attendant feeling; the more or less variable complex of emotion accompanying and characterizing a sensation or a conceptual state; as, feeling tone; color tone.

12. Color quality proper; -- called also hue. Also, a gradation of color, either a hue, or a tint or shade.

    She was dressed in a soft cloth of a gray tone.
    --Sir G. Parker.

13. (Plant Physiol.) The condition of normal balance of a healthy plant in its relations to light, heat, and moisture.

    Tone color. (Mus.) see the Note under def. 4, above.

    Tone syllable, an accented syllable.
    --M. Stuart.

Tone \Tone\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Toned; p. pr. & vb. n. Toning.]

1. To utter with an affected tone.

2. To give tone, or a particular tone, to; to tune. See Tune, v. t.

3. (Photog.) To bring, as a print, to a certain required shade of color, as by chemical treatment. To tone down.

   1. To cause to give lower tone or sound; to give a lower tone to.

   2. (Paint.) To modify, as color, by making it less brilliant or less crude; to modify, as a composition of color, by making it more harmonius.

      Its thousand hues toned down harmoniusly.
      --C. Kingsley.

   3. Fig.: To moderate or relax; to diminish or weaken the striking characteristics of; to soften.

      The best method for the purpose in hand was to employ some one of a character and position suited to get possession of their confidence, and then use it to tone down their religious strictures.
      --Palfrey.

      To tone up, to cause to give a higher tone or sound; to give a higher tone to; to make more intense; to heighten; to strengthen.

mid-14c., "musical sound or note," from Old French ton "musical sound, speech, words" (13c.) and directly from Latin tonus "a sound, tone, accent," literally "stretching" (in Medieval Latin, a term peculiar to music), from Greek tonos "vocal pitch, raising of voice, accent, key in music," originally "a stretching, tightening, taut string," related to teinein "to stretch" (see tenet). Sense of "manner of speaking" is from c.1600. First reference to firmness of body is from 1660s. As "prevailing state of manners" from 1735; as "style in speaking or writing which reveals attitude" from 1765. Tone-deaf is from 1880; tone-poem from 1845.

"to impart tone to," 1811, from tone (n.). Related: Toned; toning. To tone (something) down originally was in painting (1831); general sense of "reduce, moderate" is by 1847.

Etymology 1 n. 1 (context music English) A specific pitch. 2 (context music English) (''in the diatonic scale'') An interval of a major second. 3 (context music English) (''in a Gregorian chant'') A recitational melody. 4 The character of a sound, especially the timbre of an instrument or voice. 5 General character, mood, or trend. 6 (context linguistics English) The pitch of a word that distinguishes a difference in meaning, for example in Chinese. 7 (context dated English) A whining style of speaking; a kind of mournful or artificial strain of voice; an affected speaking with a measured rhythm and a regular rise and fall of the voice. 8 (context literature English) The manner in which speech or writing is expressed. 9 (context obsolete English) State of mind; temper; mood. 10 The shade or quality of a colour. 11 The favourable effect of a picture produced by the combination of light and shade, or of colours. 12 The definition and firmness of a muscle or organ. see also: tonus 13 (context biology English) The state of a living body or of any of its organs or parts in which the functions are healthy and performed with due vigor. 14 (context biology English) Normal tension or responsiveness to stimuli. vb. 1 (context transitive English) to give a particular tone to 2 (context transitive English) to change the colour of 3 (context transitive English) to make (something) firmer 4 (context intransitive English) to harmonize, especially in colour 5 (context transitive English) To utter with an affected tone. Etymology 2

pron. (label en now dialectal) The one (of two).

1. v. utter monotonously and repetitively and rhythmically; "The students chanted the same slogan over and over again" [syn: chant, intone]

2. of one's speech, varying the pitch [syn: inflect, modulate]

3. change the color or tone of; "tone a negative"

4. change to a color image; "tone a photographic image"

5. give a healthy elasticity to; "Let's tone our muscles" [syn: tone up, strengthen]

1. n. the quality of a person's voice; "he began in a conversational tone"; "he spoke in a nervous tone of voice" [syn: tone of voice]

2. (linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages; "the Beijing dialect uses four tones"

3. (music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound); "the timbre of her soprano was rich and lovely"; "the muffled tones of the broken bell summoned them to meet" [syn: timbre, timber, quality]

4. the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect that it has on people; "the feel of the city excited him"; "a clergyman improved the tone of the meeting"; "it had the smell of treason" [syn: spirit, feel, feeling, flavor, flavour, look, smell]

5. a quality of a given color that differs slightly from a primary color; "after several trials he mixed the shade of pink that she wanted" [syn: shade, tint, tincture]

6. a notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound; "the singer held the note too long" [syn: note, musical note]

7. a steady sound without overtones; "they tested his hearing with pure tones of different frequencies" [syn: pure tone]

8. the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli; "the doctor tested my tonicity" [syn: tonicity, tonus] [ant: atonicity]

9. a musical interval of two semitones [syn: whole tone, step, whole step]

10. the quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author; "the general tone of articles appearing in the newspapers is that the government should withdraw"; "from the tone of her behavior I gathered that I had outstayed my welcome"

Toné is a town in the Fara Department of Balé Province in southern Burkina Faso. The town has a total population of 2,536.

In literature, the tone of a literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward or feelings about the subject matter and audience.

Tone is the debut solo album of American rock bassist and Pearl Jam-member Jeff Ament, released September 16, 2008 on Monkeywrench Records. 3,000 copies of the album were pressed and distributed through independent record stores across the United States, as well as through Pearl Jam's official website. The album has also been made available as a digital download via Pearl Jam's official website for US$4.99.

Tone was a bi-monthly magazine combining coverage of technological developments in New Zealand and from around the world with reviews on the latest consumer products available in New Zealand.

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that do have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes , by analogy with phoneme. Tonal languages are extremely common in Africa, East Asia, and Central America, but rare elsewhere in Asia and in Europe; as many as seventy percent of world languages may be tonal.

In many tonal African languages, such as most Bantu languages, tones are distinguished by their pitch level relative to each other, known as a register tone system. In multisyllable words, a single tone may be carried by the entire word rather than a different tone on each syllable. Often, grammatical information, such as past versus present, "I" versus "you", or positive versus negative, is conveyed solely by tone.

In the most widely spoken tonal language, Mandarin Chinese, tones are distinguished by their distinctive shape, known as contour, with each tone having a different internal pattern of rising and falling pitch. Many words, especially monosyllabic ones, are differentiated solely by tone. In a multisyllabic word, each syllable often carries its own tone. Unlike in Bantu systems, tone plays little role in modern Chinese grammar though the tones descend from features in Old Chinese that had morphological significance (such as changing a verb to a noun or vice versa).

Contour systems are typical of languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, including Tai–Kadai, Vietic and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in Africa are dominated by register systems. Some languages combine both systems, such as Cantonese, which produces three varieties of contour tone at three different pitch levels, and the Omotic (Afroasiatic) language Bench, which employs five level tones and one or two rising tones across levels.

Many languages use tone in a more limited way. In Japanese, fewer than half of the words have a drop in pitch; words contrast according to which syllable this drop follows. Such minimal systems are sometimes called pitch accent since they are reminiscent of stress accent languages, which typically allow one principal stressed syllable per word. However, there is debate over the definition of pitch accent and whether a coherent definition is even possible.

Tone (stylized as TONE) is the fifth Japanese studio album (tenth overall) by South Korean pop group Tohoshinki, released on September 28, 2011 by Avex Trax. It is Tohoshinki's first Japanese album since becoming a two-piece band, with members Yunho and Changmin. Tone was released in three physical versions – Version A, a CD+DVD version with music videos; Version B, another CD+DVD version with off-shot movies; and Version C, a CD only version with a bonus track. Composing sessions for the album began in 2009, bull full production began in early 2011.

Musically, Tone is a pop music album largely consisting of uptempos, midtempos, and ballads with R&B, electropop and rock influences. Tone received positive reviews upon its release, with some critics praising it as one of Tohoshinki's most cohesive Japanese album to-date. The album was a major commercial success; it debuted at number one on the Oricon Albums Chart, selling 205,000 copies on its first week of release. Earning a platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) two weeks later, Tone eventually became Tohoshinki's best-selling Japanese studio album, with over 330,000 copies sold.

Tone and sound are terms used by musicians and related professions to refer to the audible characteristics of a player's sound. Tone is the product of all influences on what can be heard by the listener, including the characteristics of the instrument itself, differences in playing technique (e.g. embouchure for woodwind and brass players, fretting technique or use of a slide in stringed instruments, or use of different mallets in percussion), and the physical space in which the instrument is played. In electric and electronic instruments, tone is also affected by the amplifiers, effects, and speakers used by the musician. In recorded music, tone is also influenced by the microphones, signal processors, and recording media used to record, mix, and master the final recording, as well as the listener's audio system.

Tone is an instrumental post-rock band that formed in Washington, DC, in 1991. The group creates dynamic instrumental music using multiple electric guitars. While its two founding members, guitarist Norm Veenstra and drummer Gregg Hudson, have remained constant through most of the group’s history, Tone has also included former, current, or future members of Government Issue (Mitch Parker), Edsel (Nick Pellicciotto), Pitchblende (Justin Cherno), Velocity Girl (Jim Spellman and Kelly Riles, now known as Kelly Young), Thud (Gregg Hudson, Adam Rutland, and Bob Dotolo), Teen Idles (Geordie Grindle), Unrest (Phil Krauth), Wharton Tiers Ensemble (Kevin Kim), Strange Boutique (Steve Willett), Caligari (Dennis Kane), Smart Went Crazy (Hillary Soldati), Raymi (Gustavo Vargas), and Night Streets (Charles Andrews). Veenstra has stated in interviews that the band would never have fewer than three guitarists.

Tone has released albums on Kora Records, Neurot, Dischord, and Independent Project Records.