Portamento is a musical term currently used to mean pitch bending or sliding, and in 16th century polyphonic writing refers to a type of musical ornamentation. Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikisource, as part of the 1911 Encyclopedia Wikiproject, has original text related to this article: Music Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music MusicNovatory: the science of music encyclopedia Science of Music... In music, pitch is the perception of the frequency of a note. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ...

Pitch bending

In current usage, portamento is making a continuous "slide" up or down in frequency from a previous note, rather than a discrete change from one note to the next. This is most commonly encountered on string instruments, such as the guitar or violin, which can produce a continuous range of frequencies rather than being limited to the chromatic or diatonic scale, and impossible on a fixed-pitch instrument like the piano. The trombone also produces quite effective portamento (referred to as a "smear"), as would any instrument with a slide, such as the slide whistle. Other wind instruments have a very limited capability to produce this effect, and can portamento through only as wide a pitch range as can be affected by embouchure alone, which is often not more than a step. Machine timpani are unusual among percussion instruments in being able to be played whilst being tuned, allowing for portamento effects (often wrongly called "glissando" in this context). Sine waves of various frequencies; the lower waves have higher frequencies than those above. ... The word discrete comes from the Latin word discretus which means separate. ... A string instrument (also stringed instrument) is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. ... The classical guitar typically has 3 nylon and 3 nickel-wound strings. ... The violin is a stringed musical instrument that has four strings tuned a perfect fifth apart. ... The chromatic scale is any musical scale that contains more than one consecutive half-step (in other words two adjacent pairs of scale degrees or members which are separated by a semitone). ... In Music theory, the diatonic major scale (also known as the Guido scale), from the Greek diatonikos or to stretch out, is a fundamental building block of the European-influenced musical tradition. ... This article is about the modern musical instrument. ... Bâ™­/F tenor trombone A lip-reed aerophone with a predominantly cylindrical bore, the trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. ... A slide whistle (variously known as a swanee whistle, piston flute or less commonly jazz flute) is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorders and a tube with a piston in it. ... A wind instrument is a member of a family of musical instruments. ... The embouchure is the shaping of the lips to the mouthpiece of a wind instrument. ... See also: Dance step, Stairway. ... Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. ...

The human voice is easily capable of portamento: however, this is often regarded as a defect in singing style ("missing the note"), rather than a deliberate feature of vocal music (a "vocal swoop").

Portamento can often be generated automatically on synthesizers, where a parameter setting can be used to control the speed at which an oscillator moves to a new pitch. Often this parameter is called glide. Alternatively, portamento effects can be produced manually by a skilled player by the use of the pitch wheel at the side of most synthesizer keyboards. Synth lines with lots of portamento defined West Coast G funk of the mid 1990s, and continue to be a distinctive part of electronic music today. The term synthesiser is also used to mean frequency synthesiser, an electronic system found in communications. ... Oscillation is the periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure as seen, for example, in a swinging pendulum. ... Glide has several possible meanings: The Glide API was a proprietary 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx used on their Voodoo graphics cards. ... G-funk, or Gangsta-funk, is a type of hip hop music that emerged from West Coast gangsta rap in the early 1990s. ...

In MIDI sequencing, portamento can be generated by using a channel message that creates a sliding effect by smoothly changing pitch from the last note played to the pitch of the currently playing note. Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments. ... Look up Channel in Wiktionary, the free dictionary In general, channel refers to the path between two endpoints. ...

Ornamentation

In 16th century style, portamento is an anticipation figure, occurring on the off-beat of strong beats in the music (beats 1 and 3). The portamento resolves stepwise, almost always downward. It may occur either once or multiple times in succession. A nonchord tone or non-harmony note is a tone in a piece of homophonic music which is not in the chord that is formed by the other tones playing and in most cases quickly resolves to a chord tone. ... See also the beat disambiguation page. ... See also: Dance step, Stairway. ...

In multi-voice polyphony, the portamento figure is normally consonant. This embellishment is frequently found ornamenting suspensions, though almost never at the final cadence. Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ... Consonance is a stylistic device, often used in poetry. ... In music theory, a suspension is a nonchord tone that occurs when the harmony shifts from one chord to another, but one or more notes of the first chord are held over, suspended, into the second but then resolved to a chord tone. ... Cadence has a number of meanings, most of which involve music, sport, and performance movement activities (e. ...

See also

• A glissando is a similar effect to portamento which moves in discrete steps; for example, dragging a finger over the keys of the piano.
• Vibrato is a repetitive smooth change in pitch that occurs in rapid cycles.

Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another (a true glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another (an effective glissando). ... This article is about the modern musical instrument. ... Vibrato is a musical effect where the pitch or frequency of a note or sound is quickly and repeatedly raised and lowered over a small distance for the duration of that note or sound. ...

Citations

• Gauldin, Robert (1985). A Practical Approach to Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press