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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Accordion
  2. Acoustic bass guitar
  3. Aeolian harp
  4. Archlute
  5. Bagpipes
  6. Balalaika
  7. Bandoneon
  8. Banjo
  9. Baroque trumpet
  10. Bass drum
  11. Bassoon
  12. Bongo drums
  13. Bouzouki
  14. Brass band
  15. Brass instrument
  16. Bugle
  17. Carillon
  18. Castanet
  19. Celesta
  20. Cello
  21. Chapman Stick
  22. Chime tree
  23. Chordophone
  24. Cimbalom
  25. Clarinet
  26. Claves
  27. Clavichord
  28. Clavinet
  29. Concertina
  30. Conga
  31. Cornamuse
  32. Cornet
  33. Cornett
  34. Cowbell
  35. Crash cymbal
  36. Crotales
  37. Cymbal
  38. Digital piano
  39. Disklavier
  40. Double bass
  41. Drum
  42. Drum kit
  43. Drum machine
  44. Drum stick
  45. Electric bass
  46. Electric guitar
  47. Electric harp
  48. Electric instrument
  49. Electric piano
  50. Electric violin
  51. Electronic instrument
  52. Electronic keyboard
  53. Electronic organ
  54. English horn
  55. Euphonium
  56. Fiddle
  57. Flamenco guitar
  58. Floor tom
  59. Flugelhorn
  60. Flute
  61. Flute d'amour
  62. Glockenspiel
  63. Gong
  64. Hammered dulcimer
  65. Hammond organ
  66. Handbells
  67. Harmonica
  68. Harmonium
  69. Harp
  70. Harp guitar
  71. Harpsichord
  72. Hi-hat
  73. Horn
  74. Horn section
  75. Keyboard instrument
  76. Koto
  77. Lamellaphone
  78. Latin percussion
  79. List of string instruments
  80. Lute
  81. Lyre
  82. Mandola
  83. Mandolin
  84. Manual
  85. Maraca
  86. Marimba
  87. Marimbaphone
  88. Mellophone
  89. Melodica
  90. Metallophone
  91. Mouthpiece
  92. Music
  93. Musical bow
  94. Musical instrument
  95. Musical instrument classification
  96. Musical instrument digital interface
  97. Musical keyboard
  98. Oboe
  99. Ocarina
  100. Orchestra
  101. Organ
  102. Organology
  103. Pan flute
  104. Pedalboard
  105. Percussion instrument
  106. Piano
  107. Piccolo
  108. Pickup
  109. Pipe organ
  110. Piston valve
  111. Player piano
  112. Plectrum
  113. Psaltery
  114. Recorder
  115. Ride cymbal
  116. Sampler
  117. Saxophone
  118. Shamisen
  119. Sitar
  120. Snare drum
  121. Sound module
  122. Spinet
  123. Steel drums
  124. Steel-string acoustic guitar
  125. Stringed instrument
  126. String instrument
  127. Strings
  128. Synthesizer
  129. Tambourine
  130. Theremin
  131. Timbales
  132. Timpani
  133. Tom-tom drum
  134. Triangle
  135. Trombone
  136. Trumpet
  137. Tuba
  138. Tubular bell
  139. Tuned percussion
  140. Ukulele
  141. Vibraphone
  142. Viol
  143. Viola
  144. Viola d'amore
  145. Violin
  146. Vocal music
  147. Wind instrument
  148. Wood block
  149. Woodwind instrument
  150. Xylophone
  151. Zither

 



MUSIC INSTRUMENTS
This article is from:
 

String instrument

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Stringed instrument)

A string instrument (or stringed instrument) is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones. The most common string instruments in Western music are those in the violin, piano and guitar families.

Types of string instruments

The string bass is either plucked (pizzicato), bowed (arco) or struck (Col legno) depending on the genre and piece.
Enlarge
The string bass is either plucked (pizzicato), bowed (arco) or struck (Col legno) depending on the genre and piece.
For a full list, see List of string instruments.

String instruments are usually categorized by the technique used to produce sound. In order for a string instrument to produce sound, its string or strings must vibrate. There are three common ways to initiate vibration.

Plucking

Main article: Plucked string instrument

Instruments such as the guitar, oud and sitar are plucked, either by a finger or thumb, or by some type of plectrum. This category includes the keyboard instrument the harpsichord, which formerly used feather quills (now plastic plectra) to pluck the strings.

Bowing

Instruments like the cello and rebec are usually played by drawing a bow across the strings. All instruments in the viol and violin families fall into this category. Occasionally instruments which are normally bowed are plucked (this is known as pizzicato) instead, and instruments normally plucked are also bowed (for example, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin sometimes played the electric guitar this way using a violin bow, and more recently Jón Ţór (Jónsi) Birgisson, singer and guitar player of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós has made use of the technique). It is also possible to hit the string with the wood of the bow (col legno), a technique used for special effect. A more detailed list of bowing techniques is available here.

Striking

The third common method of sound production in stringed instruments is to strike the string with a hammer. By far the most well-known instrument to use this method is the piano, where the hammers are controlled by a mechanical action; another example is the hammered dulcimer, where the player holds the hammers. The piano is often considered a percussion instrument, since sound production through struck blows defines this instrument family; the proclamation that the piano is a percussion instrument has at times served as rhetoric for composers who relished sharp percussive effects.

A variant of the hammering method is found in the clavichord: a brass tangent touches the string and presses it to a hard surface, inducing vibration. This is a very inefficient method of sound production, yielding a very soft sound. The maneuver can also be executed with a finger on plucked and bowed instruments, where it gives equally soft results. Guitarists refer to this technique as "hammering-on".

Other methods

The aeolian harp employs a very unusual method of sound production: the strings are excited by the movement of the air.

Some string instruments have keyboards attached which are manipulated by the player, meaning they do not have to pay attention to the strings directly. The most familiar example is the piano, where the keys control the felt hammers by means of a complex mechanical action. Other string instruments with a keyboard include the clavichord (where the strings are struck by tangents), and the harpsichord (where the strings are plucked by tiny plectra).

With these keyboard instruments too, the strings are occasionally plucked or bowed by hand. Composers such as Henry Cowell wrote music which asks for the player to reach inside the piano and pluck the strings directly, or to "bow" them with bow hair wrapped around the strings, or play them by rolling the bell of a brass instrument such as a trombone on the array of strings.

Other keyed string instruments, small enough to be held by a strolling player, include the plucked autoharp, the bowed nyckelharpa, and the hurdy gurdy, which is played by cranking a rosined wheel.

Steel-stringed instruments can be played using a magnetic field. An E-Bow, for example, is small hand-held device which can be used to excite the strings of an electric guitar.

String length or scale length

This is the length of the string from nut to bridge on bowed or plucked instruments and ultimately determines the distance between different notes on the instrument. For example, a double bass with its low range needs a scale length of around 42 inches, whilst a violin scale is only about 13 inches. On the shorter scale of the violin, the left hand may easily reach a range of slightly more than two octaves without shifting position, while on the bass' longer scale, a single octave or a ninth is reachable in lower positions.

Contact points along the string

The strings of a piano
Enlarge
The strings of a piano

In bowed instruments, the bow is normally placed perpendicularly to the string, at a point half way between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge. However, different bow placements can be selected to change timbre. Application of the bow close to the bridge (known as sul ponticello) produces an intense, sometimes harsh sound, which acoustically emphasizes the upper harmonics. Bowing above the fingerboard (sul tasto) produces a purer tone with less overtone strength, emphasizing the fundamental, also known as flautando, since it sounds less reedy and more flute-like.

Similar timbral distinctions are also possible with plucked string instruments by selecting an appropriate plucking point, although the difference is perhaps more subtle.

In keyboard instruments, the contact point along the string (whether this be hammer, tangent, or plectrum) is a choice made by the instrument designer. Builders use a combination of experience and acoustic theory to establish the right set of contact points.

In harpsichords, often there are two sets of strings of equal length. These "choirs" usually differ in their plucking points. One choir has a "normal" plucking point, producing a canonical harpsichord sound; the other has a plucking point close to the bridge, producing a reedier "nasal" sound rich in upper harmonics.

Production of multiple notes

A string at a certain tension will only produce one note, so to obtain multiple notes string instruments employ one of two methods. One is to add enough strings to cover the range of notes desired; the other is to allow the strings to be stopped. The piano is an example of the former method, where each note on the instrument has its own set of strings. On instruments with stoppable strings, such as the violin or guitar, the player can shorten the vibrating length of the string, using their fingers directly (or more rarely through some mechanical device, as in the hurdy gurdy). Such instruments usually have a fingerboard attached to the neck of the instrument, providing a hard flat surface against which the player can stop the strings. On some string instruments, the fingerboard has frets, raised ridges perpendicular to the strings that stop the string at precise intervals, in which case the fingerboard is called a fretboard.

Modern frets are typically specially shaped metal wire set into slots in the fretboard. Early frets were cords tied around the neck, still seen on some instruments as wraps of nylon monofilament. Such frets are tied tightly enough that moving them during performance is impractical. The bridges of a koto, on the other hand, may be moved by the player, occasionally in the course of a single piece of music.

The middle Eastern string instrument the qanun is equipped with small levers called mandal that allow each course of multiple strings to be incrementally retuned "on the fly" while the instrument is being played. These levers raise or lower the pitch of the string course by a microtone, less than a half step.

Sound production

Unamplified ("acoustic") instruments

See also: Musical acoustics

A vibrating string on its own makes only a very quiet sound, so string instruments are usually constructed in such a way that this sound is coupled to a hollow resonating chamber, a soundboard, or both. On the violin, for example, the taut strings pass over a bridge resting on a hollow box. The strings' vibrations are distributed via the bridge and soundpost to all surfaces of the instrument, and are thus made louder. The correct technical explanation is that they allow a better match to the acoustic impedance of the air.

It is sometimes said that the soundboard or soundbox "amplifies" the sound of the strings. Technically speaking, no amplification occurs, since all of the energy to produce sound comes from the vibrating string. What really happens is that the soundboard of the instrument provides a larger surface area to create sound waves than that of the string. A larger vibrating surface moves more air, hence produces a louder sound.

Achieving a tonal characteristic that is effective and pleasing to the player's and listener's ear is something of an art, and the makers of string instruments often seek very high quality woods to this end, particularly spruce (chosen for its lightness, strength and flexibility) and maple (a very hard wood). Spruce is used for the soundboards of instruments from the violin to the piano.

In the early 20th century, the Stroh violin used a diaphragm-type resonator and a metal horn to project the string sound, much like early mechanical gramophones. Its use declined beginning about 1920, as electronic amplification came into use.

Electronic amplification

Most string instruments can be fitted with piezoelectric or magnetic pickups to convert the string's vibrations into an electrical signal which is amplified and then converted back into sound by loudspeakers. Some players attach a pickup to their traditional string instrument to "electrify" it. Another option is to use a solid-bodied instrument, which reduces unwanted feedback howls or squeals. Amplified string instruments can be much louder than their acoustic counterparts, which allows them to be used in relatively loud rock, blues, and jazz ensembles. Amplified instruments can also have their amplified tone modified by using electronic effects such as distortion, reverb, or wah-wah.

Examples of amplified string instruments include:

  • a fiddle in a country band that is fitted with a piezoelectric pickup
  • a double bass in a blues band that is fitted with a piezoelectric pickup
  • a solid-bodied violin with a magnetic pickup in a pop band
  • a solid-bodied Electric Upright Bass with a magnetic pickup in a fusion-jazz band
  • a cello fitted with a piezoelectric pickup in a pop band

See also

  • List of string instruments
  • Luthier (maker of stringed instruments)
  • Musical instrument
  • Musical acoustics
  • Vibrating string
  • String orchestra
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_instrument"

 

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