Music production

The sixth entry is il tono d’ambiente, and the noun inside it is worth following out of the studio, because Italian has built on il tono a set of fixed phrases that English cannot match with « tone ». The plainest is rispondere a tono. It does not mean answering in a particular manner; it means answering the thing that was actually asked, squarely and to the point, so ha risposto a tono praises the aim of a reply rather than its temper. Beside it stands darsi un tono, which is to put on airs — to arrange one’s voice and bearing so as to look more important than one is. And there is essere giù di tono, said of somebody off form, or of an evening that never got going. English keeps « tone » for the colour of a sound and for the slant of a letter, and for all three of those it has to change the image completely: to the point, to put on airs, off form. So learn them as whole phrases. Translating tono word by word inside them produces English that says nothing at all.