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25-468: A wolf whistle is a distinctive two-note glissando whistled sound made to show high interest in or approval of something or someone (usually a woman), especially at someone viewed as physically or sexually attractive . Today, a wolf whistle directed at a person is sometimes considered a precursor to sexual harassment , or a form of sexual harassment in itself. The name comes from the Wolf character in

50-538: A boatswain's pipe . The General Call is made on a ship to get the attention of all hands for an announcement. Sailors in harbour would whistle the General Call upon seeing an attractive woman to draw fellow sailors' attention to her. It was eventually picked up by passers-by, not knowing the real meaning of the whistle, and passed on. During a 2015 broadcast of A Way with Words , doubt was cast upon this explanation by lexicographer Grant Barrett , who noted that it

75-454: 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

100-461: A tremolo arm which can produce either a portamento, a vibrato , or a combination of both (but not a true tremolo despite the name). Prescriptive attempts to distinguish the glissando from the portamento by limiting the former to discrete, stepped glides conflict with established usage of the term for instruments like the trombone and timpani . The clarinet gesture that opens Rhapsody in Blue

125-404: A fundamental aspect of singing technique. It should also be borne in mind that a curving line or phrase-mark (similar to a slur mark) is the usual way, in vocal notation, of indicating to the singer that the vowel sound of a word should be carried over or ligatured upon two or more consecutive notes (as in a roulade ), and that in such usage legato and not slurring is always intended unless the slur

150-422: A higher pitch on fretted instruments literally by bending the string with excess finger pressure, and to a lower pitch on harmonica (a free-reed aerophone ) by altering the vocal tract to shift the resonance of the reed. On brass instruments such as the trumpet, the note is bent by using the lip. " Indeterminately pitched instruments [such as unpitched percussion instruments and friction drum rolls ]...produce

175-442: A pitch or pitch spectrum that becomes higher with an increase of dynamic and lower with a decrease of dynamic." The bent note is commonly found in various forms of jazz , blues , and rock . Portamento In music, portamento ( pl. : portamenti ; from old portamento , meaning 'carriage' or 'carrying'), also known by its French name glissade , is a pitch sliding from one note to another. The term originated from

200-482: A string quickly on a fretted instrument). Arpeggio effects (likewise named glissando) are also obtained by bowed strings (playing harmonics ) and brass, especially the horn . Musical instruments with continuously variable pitch are capable of continuous glissando, sometimes called portamento , over a substantial range. These include unfretted chordophones (such as the violin , viola , cello and double bass , and fretless guitars ), stringed instruments with

225-399: A way of stretching the strings (such as the guitar , veena , sitar or pipa ), a fretted guitar or lap steel guitar when accompanied with the use of a slide, wind instruments without valves or stops (such as the trombone or slide whistle ), timpani (kettledrums), electronic instruments (such as the theremin , the ondes Martenot , synthesizers and keytars ), the water organ , and

250-415: Is frequently committed—but it means, to 'unite' perfectly the one note with the other." He goes on to describe and illustrate that where a consonant falls between the two notes to be ligatured in this way, the portamento is achieved either by "almost insensibly" anticipating the second note of a pair in the final moments of the vowel sound preceding it, or else by minutely deferring the "salto" or leap between

275-401: Is specifically indicated. Although portamento (in the sense of slurring) continued to be widely used in popular music, it was disapproved of for operatic singing by many critics in the 1920s and 1930s as a sign of either poor technique, or of bad taste, a mark of cheap sentimentalism or showiness. This is not valid criticism of a performer when portamento is explicitly specified in the score or

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300-500: The Italian expression portamento della voce ('carriage of the voice'), denoting from the beginning of the 17th century its use in vocal performances and emulation by members of the violin family and certain wind instruments, and is sometimes used interchangeably with anticipation . It is also applied to one type of glissando on, e.g., slide trombones, as well as to the "glide" function of steel guitars and synthesizers . In

325-453: The human voice . Wind instruments can effect a similar limited slide by altering the lip pressure (on trumpet , for example) or a combination of embouchure and rolling the head joint (as on the flute), while others such as the clarinet can achieve this by slowly dragging fingers off tone holes or changing the oral cavity's resonance by manipulating tongue position, embouchure , and throat shaping. Many electric guitars are fitted with

350-399: The legato linking two distinct notes, without any slide or glide through the intervening notes. In his own opening statements forming the preface to his Lesson XIII, "Modo per portare la voce" (method to carry the voice), Vaccai states: "By carrying the voice from one note to another, it is not meant that you should drag or drawl the voice through all the intermediate intervals, an abuse that

375-532: The first example, Rodolfo's first aria in La sonnambula (1831), the portamento is indicated by the slur between the third and fourth notes. The second example, Judit's first line in Bluebeard's Castle (1912) by composer Béla Bartók , employs an inclining, wavy line between the fourth and fifth notes to indicate a continuous, steady rise in pitch. Portamento may, of course, also be used for descending intervals. In

400-507: The notes until the first moment of the vowel sound in the second note. He adds, "In phrases requiring much grace and expression, it produces a very good effect: the abuse of it, however, is to be carefully avoided, as it leads to mannerism and monotony." However, Manuel García (1805–1906), a singing pedagogue of immense renown, in his New Compendious Treatise of the Art of Singing , Part 1, Chapter VII, "On Vocalization or Agility (Agilità)", gave

425-417: The opposite opinion. Writing of the means by which the voice is conducted from one note to another, he distinguished between "con portamento" (the gliding or slurring mode) and "legato" (simply the smooth mode of vocalization). "To slur is to conduct the voice from one note to another through all the intermediate sounds. ... This dragging of the notes will assist in equalizing the registers, timbres and power of

450-426: The performance of Italian bel canto music, the concept of the musical slur and that of the true portamento have not always been held to mean the same thing. This is explained simply by Nicola Vaccai in his Practical Method of Italian Singing , originally published 1832, whose opinion in the matter holds some authority. In the sense described by Vaccai, the portamento is not a slur but an ornamental accentuation of

475-561: The piano are cluster-glissandos, used extensively by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Klavierstück X , and which "more than anything else, lend the work its unique aural flavour". On a harp, the player can slide their finger across the strings, quickly playing the scale (or on pedal harp even arpeggios such as C ♭ -D-E ♯ -F-G ♯ -A ♭ -B). Wind , brass , and fretted-stringed-instrument players can perform an extremely rapid chromatic scale (e.g., sliding up or down

500-525: The popular 1943 Tex Avery cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood who whistles in this way at the female character Red . He whistles at her in several other subsequent cartoons. The term appears in North American newspapers as early as 1943. It appears in British newspapers from 1949 onwards. According to Adam Edwards of Daily Express , the wolf whistle originates from the navy General Call made with

525-414: 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. A similar device on

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550-433: The slurred sounds, the air must be subjected to a regular and continuous pressure, so as intimately to unite all the notes with each other." There was, therefore, a difference of opinion between these two very distinguished singing masters of the 19th century as to the meaning of portamento, and its relation to the legato and the musical slur. It reflected not merely a distinction of terminology but divergent understandings of

575-401: The voice." He warned that learners should not acquire the bad habit of attacking a note with a slur, a prevailing fault in bad singers. As to "Smooth or Legato Vocalization (Agilità legata e granita)", it means, "to pass from one sound to another in a neat, sudden, and smooth manner, without interrupting the flow of voice; yet not allowing it to drag or slur over any intermediate sound ... as with

600-408: Was originally notated as a stepped glissando (Gershwin's score labels each individual note) but is in practice played as a portamento. A bent note is a musical note that is varied in pitch . With unfretted strings or other continuous-pitch instruments such as the trombone , or with the human voice , such variation is more properly described in terms of intonation . A note is commonly bent to

625-532: Was very thinly supported. The Turn To Call is far closer to the wolf whistle than the General Call. Glissando 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

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