Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Music Of or using only the seven tones of a standard scale without chromatic alterations.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In Greek music, noting one of the three standard tetrachords, consisting of four tones at the successive intervals of a half tone, a tone, and a tone: distinguished from chromatic and enharmonic. See tetrachord.
- In modern music, using the tones, intervals. or harmonies of the standard major or minor scales without chromatic alteration.
Wiktionary
- adj. music Within the boundaries of a musical scale, most commonly the Western major or minor tonalities that have octaves of seven notes in a particular configuration
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Mus.) Pertaining to the scale of eight tones, the eighth of which is the octave of the first.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. based on or using the five tones and two semitones of the major or minor scales of western music
- adj. based on the standard major or minor scales consisting of 5 tones and 2 semitones without modulation by accidentals
Etymologies
- Late Latin diatonicus, from Greek diatonikos : dia-, dia- + tonos, tone; see tone. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“There are many types of button accordions, usually with the buttons arranged in diatonic rows.”
“One genus was called the diatonic; one example of this is the Pythagorean diatonic described above, which is built on the tetrachord with the intervals 9: 8, 9: 8 and 256: 243 and was used by Philolaus and Plato.”
“Each speller and each reader went through the whole gamut of sounds, from low up to high, and from high down to low again; sometimes by regular ascension and descension, one note at a time, sounding what musicians call the diatonic intervals; at other times, going up and coming down upon the perfect fifths only.”
“The 'diatonic' scale of the Pythagoreans and Plato suggested to Kepler that the secret of the distances of the planets from one another was to be found in mathematical proportions.”
“On the mostly medium-paced solo recordings here, Ardoin's small diatonic accordion carries the rhythms and the melodies, his vocals on the lilting "Aimez Moi Ce Soir" and the heart-rending "Les Blues de la Prison," for example, evincing great subtlety and range.”
The Washington Post: Review: 'Mama, I'll Be Long Gone' finally delivers a Cajun innovator his honor
“So although the lyrics are in Spanish, and there is an accordion in there, these are not corridos, and the accordion is not diatonic, nor is it playing conjunto riffs.”
The Huffington Post: Michal Shapiro: Pistolera: Taking Life by the Teeth
“It 's a very emotional experience," Mr. Chatham said, noting that although the piece 's 30-minute third movement is built on a simple ascending diatonic scale, the effect is that all the notes of the scale are heard at once.”
“Countless pop songs give us permutations of the same stock phrases, diatonic or pentatonic, but kept together not by any intrinsic power of adhesion but only by a plodding rhythmical backing and banal sequence of chords.”
“If there is any hope of communicating with extraterrestrials, it's best to strip away religion, politics, all of the usual excuses for making war, and stick to the diatonic scale.”
The Huffington Post: George Heymont: The Fabulous Invalid Clings to Life
“Instead he began creating ensemble pieces in a monotonous and repetitive style; these works consisted of a series of syncopated rhythms ingeniously contracted or extended within a stable diatonic structure.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘diatonic’.
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MUSIC - jazz
Afro, habanera, pentatonic scale, bop, bebop, jazz, cool jazz, pentatonic, malignment, music genre, jazz musician, syncopate and 437 more...
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MUSIC - ALL TERMS
With focus on non-classical styles, but not excluding terms of the latter.
banjo, accompaniment, acoustic bass, bass guitar, bass clef, ground, brass, cornet, Mute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, arrangement and 866 more...
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bkerr's Words
wyrd, absinthe, homunculus, zorkmid, informon, decider, diachronic, frak, hwæt, feldercarb, yawp, dogfooding and 540 more...
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hildjj's Words
bookmarklet, demisemiquaver, zeitgeist, hermeneutics, oligarch, quisling, absinthe, mellifluent, verisimilitude, implacable, necrotic, nacreous and 243 more...
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-tonic
notes in a musical scale; relating to music; muscles
pentatonic, diatonic, pretonic, myatonic, vagatonic, hematonic, isotonic, monotonic, tonic
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hedges's Words
wii, crepuscule, adumbrate, concatenation, sufi, qawwali, furry, riot, mellifluous, conspiracy, etymology, tea cozy and 369 more...
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Reading Reading
Words from the works of Peter Reading - at least one from each (except the Schwitters-esque erosions, cut-ups etc).
overbright, pimpled, muskiness, effuse, stoup, maul, unlevel, viscid, perfidious, glibly, aloes, drouth and 449 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, D
dodecahedron, din, diglyceride, dysphotopsia, decoction, deboss, diatonic, dithyramb, divagate, discalced, dishdasha, daft and 281 more...
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Beautiful Music
a cappella, accelerando, accompagnato, adagio, ad libitum, agitato, aleatory, alla breve, allegro, allemande, alto, andante and 548 more...
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Music
serenata, callithumpian, fioritura, diatonic, rhythmics, lento, hypodiapente, virtuoso, ugab, teneramente, timist, agada and 1 more...
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sound / modulation / tonality
arpeggiator, interpolation, lossless, tonality, polysonic, monophonic, oscillator, modulation, parametric, compressor, sequencer, graintable and 15 more...
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Lowry
nutant, meed, donga, mephitic, punk, caliginous, cauchemar, horripilation, hyacinthine, corposant, counterscarp, garboon and 65 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for diatonic.
yarb Citation on pertussal. Jul 30, 2008
yarb ...curlews employ
the same diatonic now as then.
- Peter Reading, Early Morning Call, from Fiction, 1979 Jun 26, 2008