Tone (linguistics)

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 /ˈtoʊniːm/, 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.

Tone (musical instrument)

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.

Stringed instruments

The tone of a stringed instrument is influenced by factors related to construction and player technique. The instrument's shape, particularly of its resonant cavity, as well as the choice of tonewood for the body, neck, and fingerboard, are all major determinants of its tone. The material and age of the strings is also an important factor. Playing technique also influences tone, including subtle differences in the amount of pressure applied with the fretting hand, picking or bowing intensity, use of muting and/or drone techniques.

Twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and associated with the "Second Viennese School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the first decades of its existence. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th century composers. Many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or even actively opposed the technique eventually adopted it in their music, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky.

Steel tongue drum

A steel tongue drum, tank drum or hank drum is a round steel slit/tongue drum originally fashioned from a propane tank.

Description

A steel tongue drum can be made from an empty (often 20 lb) propane tank. The tank is flipped over, the base cut/knocked off; and seven to ten tongues are cut radially into the bottom of the tank, forming the top of the instrument. Steel tongue drum can also be made from new unused tank heads. The tongues can be tuned by the maker by varying the length of the cuts, or by adding weights, often neodymium magnets to the tongues. The steel tongue drum is often tuned to pentatonic scales but can be tuned to the diatonic scale, the chromatic scale, or any set of notes the maker chooses. The instrument is played with the fingers or with mallets. The tone is bell-like.

 Sound example 

History

The steel tongue drum had several predecessors, most notably the Whale Drum by Jim Doble and the Tambiro by Felle Vega. In February 2007 Dennis Havlena, inspired by the physical properties of the Tambiro and the tone layout of the Hang, created a steel tongue drum with a circular cross pattern layout and from an empty 20-pound propane tank. The name 'Hank Drum' came from a combination of "Hang" and "tank".

Mark

Mark may refer to:

Christianity

Currency

Mark (dinghy)

The Mark is a single-hander class of small sailing dinghy. The design probably first appeared in the 1960s, at about the same time as the Laser, but never took off as a popular racing class. The Mark is 12 feet (3.7 m) in length, with forward and side buoyancy compartments. A 19 feet (5.8 m) free standing rotating mast stepped far forward in the front buoyancy compartment supports a mainsail.

Gospel of Mark

The Gospel According to Mark (Greek: τὸ κατὰ Μᾶρκον εὐαγγέλιον, to kata Markon euangelion), the second book of the New Testament, is one of the four canonical gospels and the three synoptic gospels. It was traditionally thought to be an epitome (summary) of Matthew, which accounts for its place as the second gospel in the Bible, but most scholars now regard it as the earliest of the gospels. Most modern scholars reject the tradition which ascribes it to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of Peter, and regard it as the work of an unknown author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative.

Mark tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death and burial and the discovery of the empty tomb – there is no genealogy or birth narrative, nor, in the original ending at chapter 16, any post-resurrection appearances. It portrays Jesus as a heroic man of action, an exorcist, healer and miracle worker. Jesus is also the Son of God, but he keeps his identity secret, concealing it in parables so that even the disciples fail to understand. All this is in keeping with prophecy, which foretold the fate of the messiah as Suffering Servant. The gospel ends, in its original version, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee, and an unheeded instruction to spread the good news of the resurrection.