tone cluster

American  

noun

Music.

1. a group of adjacent notes played on a keyboard instrument typically with the fist, forearm, or elbow, similar groupings also occurring in orchestral music.

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tone cluster British  

noun

1. music a group of adjacent notes played simultaneously, either in an orchestral score or, on the piano, by depressing a whole set of adjacent keys

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Example Sentences

“Ideologically it’s an affront, aesthetically it’s an affront ... on a piano, it’s not just a chord, this is a tone cluster,” said Hamza Walker, of the reimagined statue.

From Los Angeles Times

In “Let There Be Light,” Mr. Williams instead writes a swelling tone cluster of dissonant strings and wordless vocals, building an eerie tension that bursts and immediately recedes to a thick haze of high violins.

From New York Times

“They had to be able to name tone rows, or pick out a single note from a tone cluster. It was like an advanced-musicianship test from grad school.”

From The New Yorker

But a dense tone cluster of brass and Hammond organ interrupts this repose, and the music devolves into a buzzing, asynchronous mass.

From New York Times

But there were other, more dissonant motifs, like the clogged tone of a Kia horn, a truck’s blast, and my favorite discordant moment: the sickly tone cluster of an apparently ailing Camry horn, with its pitches drooping as the driver sustained it.

From New York Times