atonal
The soprano sang with a stunning blend of tonal warmth, emotional depth and precision.
She showed great tonal variety in the three Poulenc chansons.
The second and third movements featured some rich tonal texturing and sumptuous sounds from the string section.
Much of the music was tonal and contained attractive melodic material.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Technical music terms
acciaccatura
accidental
aeolian
aleatory
alto clef
antiphonal
discordant
harmonic
harmonic progression
harmony
hemidemisemiquaver
inversion
overtone
ritardando
rubato
scherzando
scordatura
secco recitative
staccato
whole step

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Types of music

tonaladjective (LANGUAGE)

language, phonetics specialized
expressing differences in meaning with the use of different intonation(= the sound changes produced by the rise and fall of the voice when speaking) for words that have a similar sound:
Non-native speakers trying to learn a tonal language have great difficulty with tone.
Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese, Lithuanian, and most sub-Saharan languages.
Tonal languages also have intonation patterns that can override the basic tone of the words.
The present study reveals that "secondary baby talk" also occurs in Japanese, a tonal language.
Most sub-Saharan African languages are tonal.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Linguistics: phonology & phonetics
accommodation
alliterative
alveolar
apheresis
aphesis
assonance
diphthong
homonym
intrusive
labial
labialize
labiodental
postalveolar
postconsonantal
retroflex
retroflexion
rhotic
the International Phonetic Alphabet
unpronounceable
unrepeatable

tonaladjective (COLOUR)

relating to a form or degree of a colour:
The interior design features the use of an autumnal tonal colour palette.
The designer scanned the images and gray-scaled them so that they all had the same tonal range.
A tonal palette of black, grey and white, with beige and khaki in places, was used on the mid-length dresses.
The photographer was an influential master of light, form, subtle tonal shading and darkroom techniques.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

The qualities of colour
analogous
brightly
brightness
colourful
colourfully
darkness
fluorescent
harsh
lurid
neutrally
non-complementary
non-fluorescent
non-yellowing
over-bright
psychedelic
vibrantly
violent
vivid
vividly
vividness

tonal | American Dictionary

tonal
adjective[ not gradable ]
us/ˈtoʊ·nəl/
music
organized based a particular note and the relationship of other notes to it

Examples of tonal

tonal
Errors and could be due to the perseveration of the tonal pattern emerging from the prior utterance.
Music listening activities were conducted using tonal music of different genre and styles.
The central chapters on the tonal system and tonal variations are the most highly developed in the book.
The primary tonal units identified within this theory are based on pitch direction: falls, rises, and fall-rises.
Such increases may reflect additional resources required to process tonal distinctions for lexical purposes or to store tonal differences in order to distinguish lexical items.
Hence, to fill the gap in research, empirical investigation using children of a tonal language is warranted.
Another language family, tonal language, uses relative pitch of the phonemes to distinguish lexical units.
A brief tutti (bar 15) confirms the moment of tonal arrival.
The intonational and stress difference is perceived as a tonal difference, and the two words are not recognised as being the same.
There was, however, a significant interaction between type of tonal contrast and processing modes.
No special tonal provision is made for the exit from scenes such as these.
The potential is formed from the completive by a tonal alternation.
Lastly, underlying tonal representations in intonation languages may be different from surface phonological representations.
Whether that break coincides with a tonal morpheme or a tonal juncture is something we need to determine.
After the main orchestral cadence, the organ continues after the orchestra stops, adding a timbral cadence after the tonal cadence.
See all examples of tonal
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.