In music, a glissando [ɡlisˈsando] (plural: glissandi, abbreviated gliss.) is a glide from one pitch to another. It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, to glide. In some contexts it is distinguished from the continuous portamento. Some colloquial equivalents are slide, sweep (referring to the 'discrete glissando' effects on guitar & harp respectively), bend, smear, rip (for a loud, violent gliss to the beginning of a note), lip (in jazz terminology, when executed by changing one's embouchure on a wind instrument), or falling hail (a glissando on a harp using the back of the fingernails). From the standpoint of musical acoustics and scientific terminology, some instruments, such as slide trombones, unfretted bowed-string instruments, guitars played with slides and, of course, slide whistles, can change the frequency of their notes continuously, while others, notably acoustic keyboard instruments, are restricted to quantized (stepped) changes in pitch. (The clavichord's Bebung is the one exception, but that is essentially ornamentation of a single pitch, not a glide.) Some instruments, such as the clarinet and saxophone, can produce a continuous pitch (frequency) change, although their characteristic design is to provide distinct pitches.

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