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Concept
Glissando
Summary
In music, a glissando (ɡlisˈsando; plural: glissandi, abbreviated gliss.) is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is equivalent to portamento, which is a continuous, seamless glide between notes. In other contexts, it refers to discrete, stepped glides across notes, such as on a piano. Some terms that are similar or equivalent in some contexts are slide, sweep bend, smear, rip (for a loud, violent glissando to the beginning of a note), lip (in jazz terminology, when executed by changing one's embouchure on a wind instrument), plop, or falling hail (a glissando on a harp using the back of the fingernails). On wind instruments, a scoop is a glissando ascending to the onset of a note achieved entirely with the embouchure, except on trombone, where the slide is used.
The glissando is indicated by following the initial note with a line, sometimes wavy, in the desired direction, often accompanied by the abbreviation gliss.. Occasionally, the desired notes are notated in the standard method (i.e. semiquavers) accompanied by the word 'glissando'.
On some instruments (e.g., piano, harp, xylophone), discrete tones are clearly audible when sliding. For example, on a keyboard, a player's fingernails can be made to slide across the white keys or over the black keys, producing either a C major scale or an F major pentatonic scale, or their relative modes; by performing both at once, it is possible to produce a full chromatic scale. Maurice Ravel used glissandi in many of his piano compositions, and "Alborada del Gracioso" contains notable piano glissando passages in thirds executed by the right hand. Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Liszt and Gershwin have all used glissandi for piano in notable compositions.
Organ players—particularly in contemporary music—sometimes employ an effect known as the palm glissando, where over the course of the glissando the flat of the hand is used to depress a wide area of keys simultaneously, resulting in a dramatic atonal sweep.
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