employing variations in pitch to distinguish meanings of otherwise similar words
<adj.pert> Chinese is a tonal language
having tonality; i.e. tones and chords organized in relation to one tone such as a keynote or tonic
<adj.all>
"Hey man, what's up?" is the American-style greeting on the streets, thickened by the Liberian accents of natives whose tonal dialects make the expression difficult to understand.
The lean score of Petrified touches down, regularly and reassuringly, upon tonal bases.
Both are artists of wonderful sensitivity, alert to the finest gradations of tonal and verbal nuance; neither, on this occasion, produced the wholly absorbed, completely transported account of their roles of which one knows them capable.
Though his latest works have made their own kind of peace with the tonal tradition (he is 80 now), that symphony represents his most defiant earlier distancing.
If the opera never quite takes off or becomes more than the sum of these identifiable parts it is plotted with great economy and directness, carved out in massive tonal arches.
He has washed the paper a pale sepia to create a mid - tone, and then added darker brown as well as white heightening to broaden the tonal range, giving depth to the foliage, the landscape and to the portentous clouds above the doomed Icarus.
He searched for musical clarity and control in what he termed the "backbone" of a score and dismissed virtuoso playing and tonal beauty for its own sake.
On the other hand, older Steinways from the early part of the century, when competently restored and rebuilt, can be wonders of mechanical excellence and tonal beauty.