What is another word for dissonances?

Pronunciation: [dˈɪsənənsɪz] (IPA)

Dissonances refer to the unpleasant sound that arises when there is a lack of harmony between different musical notes. Synonyms for dissonances include disharmony, discord, cacophony, and discordance. Disharmony refers to a lack of agreement or compatibility, much like dissonances in music. Discord emphasizes the noisy, often unpleasant sound of clashing notes. Cacophony is often used to describe harsh, jarring sounds that lack melody or harmony. Discordance, on the other hand, encompasses both the lack of harmony and the unpleasant sound that arises from it. Overall, these synonyms provide different shades of meaning to the term dissonances, but all point to a lack of harmony in sound.

Usage examples for Dissonances

He fought with bands of villainous appearing men holding tuning forks; he was rolled down terrific gulfs a-top of pianos; while accompanying him in his vertiginous flight were other pianos, square, upright and grand; pianos of sinister and menacing expression; pianos with cruel grinning teeth; pianos of obsolete and anonymous shapes; pianos that leered at him, sneered at him with screaming dissonances.
"Melomaniacs"
James Huneker
His feet were as lead, and suddenly the heavens opened, fiercely lightened, the savage thunder leaping upon him in chromatic dissonances; then a great stillness in C major, and with solemn, silent steps he descended in modulated chords until he reached an awful crevasse.
"Melomaniacs"
James Huneker
We have seen him in more or less close relations with Behrisch, Jung Stilling, and Herder, from all of whom he was divided by dissonances which made a perfect mutual understanding impossible.
"The Youth of Goethe"
Peter Hume Brown

Famous quotes with Dissonances

  • As we rise higher in the understanding of ourselves, the national and racial dissonances will be forgotten in the universal rhythms of Truth and Love.
    Ruth St. Denis
  • If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?
    Charles Ives
  • What I try with my own stuff is to work the poem to a slow climax through a series of quiet painful dissonances.
    Kenneth Rexroth
  • Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.
    Brian Aldiss
  • Now, as discord is allowable, and even necessarily opposed to concord, why may not , or a seeming jargon, be opposed to fixed sounds and harmonical proportion? Some of the discords in modern music, unknown till this century, are what the ear can but just bear, but have a very good effect as to contrast. The severe laws of preparing and resolving discord, may be too much adhered to for great effect; I am convinced that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it.
    Charles Burney

Related words: dissonance in music, dissonance in literature, the use of dissonance in music, the concept of dissonance in music

Related questions:

  • What is the effect of dissonance on music?
  • How can one create dissonance in music?
  • What causes dissonance in music?
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