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blueraspberry
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19 Dec 2022, 11:52 pm

Can someone explain what tone is? For both music and talking...



Rossall
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20 Dec 2022, 4:54 pm

It's a noise of a given frequency. For example a 1 Khz tone sounds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FBijeNg_Gs


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roronoa79
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26 Dec 2022, 12:08 am

Tone in music means specifically the frequency of a given sound represented in Hertz. More generally, tone can refer to the sound itself, eg: "This piano has a beautiful tone."

Tone in talking has more to do with intonation. That is: how those different audio frequencies are used in speech and their implications. We speak with different intonations in conversation for countless reasons: emotion, circumstance, social factors, mental state, etc. Someone curious might speak with an upward inflection to their tone. Someone bored might speak in a monotone. Someone frightened might speak with erratic intonation.
In less formal speech, tone in conversation can refer to someone's manner of speech in general, usually in a negative sense, eg: "Don't take that tone of voice with me." Taking a "tone" with someone means speaking in a way that displays impatience, childishness, condescension, frustration, snideness, dismissiveness, etc. Intonation is often a part of this kind of "tone", but it is not the only part.


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