String instrument

String instruments, also called chordophones, are musical instruments that make sound by using vibrating strings. Musicians play these instruments in many ways, such as plucking the strings with fingers or a small tool, or rubbing them with a bow. Some string instruments, like guitars, are played by plucking, while others, like violins, are played with a bow.

In orchestras, bowed string instruments such as violins, violas, cellos, and double basses are very important in Western classical music. These instruments can also be plucked using fingers, a technique called pizzicato. Electric guitars use many techniques, including plucking and strumming.

Other string instruments are mainly plucked, such as harps, electric basses, sitars, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, and bouzoukis. In the Hornbostel–Sachs system for classifying musical instruments, string instruments are called chordophones. These instruments can be played by striking, plucking, bowing, or even using wind, like in an Aeolian harp. Most string instruments have a hollow body that helps make the string vibrations louder, but some, like electric guitars, use electronic amplification instead.

Classification

In musicology, string instruments are called chordophones. They are one of the five main groups of instruments in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification.

Hornbostel–Sachs separates chordophones into two groups: simple instruments without a special box to make the sound louder, and composite instruments with such a box. Most common Western instruments are in the second group, but the piano and harpsichord are in the first group.

Curt Sachs divided chordophones into four types: zithers, lutes, lyres, and harps. Zithers include instruments like the musical bow and piano. Lutes have a body and a neck, and include instruments such as the guitar and violin. Lyres have two arms connected by a crossbar, like the Greek kithara. Harps have strings that stand straight up from the soundboard.

Earliest string instruments

Musical bows, which are hunting bows used as single-stringed instruments, have survived in parts of Africa. A cave painting from around 13,000 BC in the Trois Frères cave in France shows what some believe is a musical bow. From this, more complex stringed instruments like bow harps, harps, and lyres developed. These instruments could play more notes and chords by adding strings.

Archaeological finds have uncovered some of the oldest stringed instruments in Ancient Mesopotamian sites, such as the lyres of Ur. These instruments needed a way to adjust string tension, leading to the creation of tuning mechanisms. Important early instruments included lyres with wooden bodies and strings, which later influenced the development of harps and violin-type instruments. Indian instruments from 500 BC had many strings, ranging from 7 to 21, and a 2,000-year-old single-stringed instrument made of deer antler was found in Vietnam.

Lutes

Further information: History of lute-family instruments

Old pictures show people playing instruments called lutes thousands of years ago, starting in Mesopotamia. These early lutes came in two main types: long and short. The long ones may have led to instruments like the tamburs and pandura, while the short ones developed in places such as Bactria, Gandhara, and Northwest India.

In the medieval era, new kinds of string instruments appeared in different parts of the world. In Middle Eastern areas, instruments like the rebec had a special pear-like shape and three strings. In Europe, early versions of the violin and fiddle came from instruments such as the gittern, which was a four-stringed forerunner of the guitar. These instruments often used strings made from catgut and silk.

Renaissance to modern

String instrument design improved during the Renaissance and the Baroque period (1600–1750). Instruments like violins and guitars took shapes similar to those we know today. By the 19th century, factories made string instruments more common. Instruments such as cellos, violas, and upright basses became regular parts of orchestras and smaller music groups.

In the 20th century, new technologies changed how string instruments sounded. Electric violins appeared in the 1920s and became important in early jazz music in the United States. The invention of electric guitars allowed musicians to play louder. In the 1960s, amplifiers and special effects helped create new music styles like psychedelic rock, blues rock, and early heavy metal music. These changes let musicians explore new sounds in both classical and modern music.

Types of instruments

String instruments make sound when their strings vibrate. There are three main groups of string instruments.

Lutes have strings supported by a neck and a bout, like guitars, violins, and saz. Harps have strings contained within a frame. Zithers have strings mounted on a body, frame, or tube, such as the guqin, cimbalom, autoharp, harpsichord, piano, and valiha.

String instruments can also be grouped by how they are played. The three most common ways are plucking, bowing, and striking. Plucking is used for instruments like the veena, banjo, ukulele, guitar, harp, lute, mandolin, oud, and sitar. Bowing is used for the violin, viola, cello, and double bass, among others. Striking is used in the piano and hammered dulcimer. Some instruments, like the aeolian harp, use the movement of air to make sound. Others, like the piano, clavichord, and harpsichord, use keys to trigger mechanisms that sound the strings.

Main article: Plucked string instrument Main article: Bowed string instrument Further information: List of string instruments

Changing the pitch of a vibrating string

Main article: Mersenne's laws

There are three main ways to change the pitch of a vibrating string.

First, you can change the length of the string. A longer string makes a lower pitch, and a shorter string makes a higher pitch. For example, a concert harp has pedals that shorten the vibrating length of strings during a performance.

You can also change the pitch by adjusting the tension of the string. A looser string makes a lower pitch, and a tighter string makes a higher pitch. Instruments like a pedal steel guitar use pedals to increase tension and raise the pitch of certain strings.

Finally, the pitch can be changed by altering the thickness or mass of the string. Thicker or heavier strings produce lower pitches. For example, double bass strings are often wrapped with metal to make them heavier and produce lower pitches.

String length or scale length

The length of a string from the nut to the bridge changes the distance between notes on an instrument. For example, a double bass, which plays lower notes, has a scale length of about 42 inches (110 cm). A violin, which plays higher notes, has a scale length of only about 13 inches (33 cm). On a violin's shorter scale, a player can easily reach more than two octaves without moving their hand. On the bass's longer scale, they can reach about one octave or a ninth in lower positions.

Contact points along the string

In bowed instruments like violins, the bow is usually placed halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge. Players can move the bow closer to the bridge for a brighter sound, or above the fingerboard for a softer tone.

Bowed instruments need a curved bridge so players can easily play one string at a time. This is different from plucked instruments like guitars, where the bridge can be flat. Because of this, bowed instruments usually have four to seven strings, though some double basses have five.

Production of multiple notes

One string can only make one note. String instruments have two ways to make many notes. One way is to have many strings, like a piano. It has 88 strings to play 88 notes. The other way is to change the length of the part of the string that is making sound. For example, on a guitar or violin, a player uses their fingers to press the string against the fingerboard at different spots. This makes the vibrating part shorter and creates different notes.

Some instruments, like the nyckelharpa and the hurdy-gurdy, use special devices to change note lengths. Others, like the koto, let the player move parts called bridges during a song. Modern harps and the Middle Eastern qanun have levers that change the pitch of strings while playing.

Sympathetic strings

Main article: Sympathetic string

Some string instruments have extra strings called sympathetic strings that are not played directly. These strings vibrate and shake when the main strings are played, making the sound richer and deeper. This happens when notes played match the pitch of the sympathetic strings, like the same note or notes an octave higher or lower. Instruments like the sarangi, the grand piano, the hardanger fiddle, and the rubab use sympathetic strings to create their special sounds.

Sound production

String instruments make sound when their strings shake. These instruments have special parts to help make the sound louder, like a hollow body or a thin wooden board called a soundboard. For example, on a violin, the strings shake a small bridge, which moves the whole body of the violin. This spreads the shaking and makes the sound louder.

Some string instruments can also be made louder using small electronic parts called pickups. These pickups change the shaking into electrical signals. The signals can then be made louder through speakers. This lets musicians play in loud music groups and change the sound with special effects.

Symphonic strings

The string instruments usually used in an orchestra are called "symphonic strings" or the string section. These include violins (split into first and second violins), violas, cellos, and double basses. When music calls for "strings," it usually means this group. Orchestras sometimes add extra string instruments like the concert harp and piano. In older music from the Baroque orchestra, instruments such as the harpsichord, theorbo, lute, or pipe organ were used. In a string quartet, the cello takes on the bass role instead of the double bass.