How to Use tonality in a Sentence
tonality
noun-
Her tonality was the perfect fit to bring the dark and the light into the thread.
—Matthew Allan, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2023
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That’s one way in which the stand-up informed the tonality of some of the music.
—Hershal Pandya, Vulture, 21 Apr. 2022
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The tonality in many prints veers between stark white and pitch-black.
—Richard B. Woodward, WSJ, 16 June 2021
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Practice one on one with a friend to work on your tonality.
—Wasim Hajjiri, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2021
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Then the rhythm of the characters and tonality, like, should every scene have a joke?
—Randee Dawn, Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec. 2022
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But Calbi is also known for his ability to bring out the tonality of the bass.
—Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone, 4 Dec. 2021
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Following on from this are nearly 30 pages of notes, graphs and analysis of the rhythm and tonality of the birds.
—Daniel A. Gross, Smithsonian, 25 Apr. 2017
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Following on from this are nearly 30 pages of notes, graphs and analysis of the rhythm and tonality of the birds.
—Daniel A. Gross, Smithsonian, 25 Apr. 2017
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Soon enough, all of the wonderful tonality and rhythm of an opponent's offense is stripped away.
—Rob Mahoney, SI.com, 28 Apr. 2018
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Layered over all this is an original aria with gospel tonality sung by Liz Gré.
—New York Times, 19 July 2019
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Each contains a detail of a head of hair — waves, wisps — and each is printed in a different tonality of warm brown or velvety black.
—Leah Ollman, latimes.com, 9 July 2019
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The lamps have now disappeared, giving a darker tonality to the painting.
—Scott Reyburn, New York Times, 19 Sep. 2019
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Making matters more unsettled, the tonalities of the performers are all over the map.
—Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 19 Aug. 2017
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The First Quartet precedes Schoenberg’s break from tonality; the Third is from his twelve-tone period.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 11 Mar. 2024
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Others had dreamed up the piano, diatonic tonality, and the 12-bar blues riff.
—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 28 June 2018
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Gone is any sense of key or tonality, and the forms are intuitive, unrelated to symphonies, sonatas or dances.
—Christian Hertzog, sandiegouniontribune.com, 7 May 2018
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The tonality is much paler—no business tones, no dark blues, no industry colors.
—Leena Kim, Town & Country, 14 Oct. 2019
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Composers have been shifting from atonality to tonality and back for over a hundred years.
—Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Nov. 2022
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Composers have been shifting from atonality to tonality and back for over a hundred years.
—Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Nov. 2022
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La Monte Young, whose String Trio of 1958 is widely held to be the starting point of minimalism, steered clear of tonality and maintained an avant-garde posture.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2017
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Design should fit the tonality of a brand but should remain consistent throughout.
—Goran Paun, Forbes, 28 Jan. 2022
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But the 6 Pro stood out this year because the resolution is higher and the overall tonality is just slightly better.
—Jakob Schiller, Outside Online, 27 May 2022
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Most of these chords are major or minor triads with extra notes attached, giving the feeling of a smudged or blurred tonality.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2022
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And a piece by composer Chen Yi brought traditional Chinese harmonies and tonalities to the mix.
—Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities, 6 Dec. 2019
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The tonality is gray, or grisaille, because this is the underpainting, in the old-master technique, that Elizabeth learned at art school.
—Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, 10 Oct. 2018
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Understanding how the subject faces change, and adapts to it, determines the element and the decanter’s tonality.
—Robb Report Studio, Robb Report, 20 Feb. 2024
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This helps add some tonality back into the hair, also condition and seal the cuticle layer.
—Jessica Teich, Good Housekeeping, 8 Apr. 2021
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The days when his embrace of bright tonality and luscious symphonic textures chafed against the aesthetics of a modernist mainstream are gone, along with the very notion of a mainstream.
—Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2017
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The Scottish lo-fi band’s tunes spoke to him, and his interpretation of the 1991 classic plays with its tonality, with Gibbard making his re-work a bit more hushed than the original.
—Ilana Kaplan, Billboard, 27 July 2017
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There was a span of time, in the mid-to-late 2000s, when phone rings would influence the digital tonality of beats for rappers like Soulja Boy and J-Kwon, whose songs would then become ringtones themselves.
—Cassie Owens, Philly.com, 24 May 2018
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tonality.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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