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In music, a glissando (; plural: glissandi, abbreviated gliss.) is a from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is equivalent to portamento, which is a continuous, seamless glide between notes. In other contexts, it refers to discrete, stepped glides across notes, such as on a piano. Some terms that are similar or equivalent in some contexts are slide, sweep bend, smear, rip (for a loud, violent glissando to the beginning of a note), (Though the editor is Deane Root, not L. Deane Root). lip (in jazz terminology, when executed by changing one's embouchure on a wind instrument),, from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition, edited by Barry Dean Kernfeld (New York: Grove Dictionaries, 2002). plop, or falling hail (a glissando on a harp using the back of the fingernails). On wind instruments, a scoop is a glissando ascending to the onset of a note achieved entirely with the embouchure, except on instruments that have a slide (such as a trombone).
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 Atonality sweep.
A similar device on the piano is cluster-glissandos, used extensively by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Klavierstück X, and which "more than anything else, lend the work its unique aural flavour".Joscelyn Godwin. "Karlheinz Stockhausen: Nr. 4, Klavierstück X" (review). Notes, second series, 25, no. 2 (December): 332–333. Citation on 333. On a harp, the player can slide their finger across the strings, quickly playing the scale (or on pedal harp even such as C–D–E–F–G–A–B). Wind instrument, Brass instrument, and fretted-stringed-instrument players can perform an extremely rapid chromatic scale (e.g., sliding up or down a string quickly on a fretted instrument).
Arpeggio effects (likewise named glissando) are also obtained by bowed strings (playing harmonics) and brass, especially the French horn.Del Mar, Norman: Anatomy of the Orchestra (University of California Press 1981). String harmonic glissandi are discussed pp. 132–133; horn glissandi pp. 252–254
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 guitar are fitted with 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. Harvard Dictionary of Music, edited by Willi Apel (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1944): 298 or 595 The clarinet gesture that opens Rhapsody in Blue was originally notated as a stepped glissando (Gershwin's score labels each individual note) but is in practice played as a portamento.
The bent note is commonly found in various forms of jazz, blues, and rock music.
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