String Instruments

Any musical instrument that produces sound by the vibration of stretched strings, which may be made of vegetable fiber, metal, animal gut, silk, or artificial materials such as plastic or nylon. In nearly all stringed instruments the sound of the vibrating string is amplified by the use of a resonating chamber or soundboard. The string may be struck, plucked, rubbed (bowed), or, occasionally, blown (by the wind); in each case, the effect is to displace the string from its normal position of rest and to cause it to vibrate in complex patterns.

Because most stringed instruments are made from wood or other easily perishable materials, their history before written documentation is almost unknown, and contemporary knowledge of “early” instruments is limited to the ancient cultures of East Asia and South Asia, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; but even for these places, historians must depend largely on iconographic (pictorial) sources rather than surviving specimens.

Thus, stringed instruments are identified as chordophones—that is to say, instruments in which the sound is produced by the vibration of chords, or strings. This main category is then further divided into four subtypes—lutes, zithers, lyres, and harps.

The production of sound

The ear, because of its structure, adds to and subtracts from the outside sound. It is, for instance, relatively insensitive to low-frequency sound pressure but is extremely sensitive to fine degrees of pitch change. At the same time, it can accept a great number of pitch and tuning systems. On a worldwide basis, there are a large and varied number of tonal systems, the most ancient stemming from China. The oldest known of these in the West is the so-called Pythagorean system, articulated by the famed 7th-century Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras; others include meantone temperament, just intonation, and the equal-tempered system, methods of tuning calculation that vary slightly in the exact size they assign to the intervals within an octave. All of these systems represent theoretical mathematical concepts to some degree, and their origins must be sought in arcane numerological systems rather than in practical musicianship. Thus, “tuning” and “playing in tune” do not necessarily refer to the same thing; players and tuners make constant adjustments to any basic mathematically determined framework according to their judgment and experience. In other words, even though a given “scientific” tuning system outlines scales and modes, the instrumentalist who plays an instrument with great pitch flexibility (the violin, for instance) spends much time in the spaces between the notes assigned in the given scale.

Soundboard

The construction and maintenance of Western stringed instruments generally have been complicated over the centuries by a continual rise in standard pitch, requiring strings to be tightened. Older instruments (such as a Stradivari violin) have been subjected to additional physical strain and therefore needed heavier bass bars (braces under the belly).

One of the clearest illustrations of the basic importance of the shape of the resonator to a musical instrument is the African mouth bow (a musical bow that the player partially inserts in his mouth). On stringed instruments with permanently fixed resonators, the size, dimensions, shape of apertures, thickness, and bracing of the resonating surfaces largely determine which overtones will be emphasized and thus what the instrument will sound like. On a well-made violin, for example, the resonances of the body of air enclosed in the body of the instrument and the belly should be close in pitch to the two strings A and D, thus amplifying and coloring these pitches and their overtones. The sound quality of a stringed instrument is also influenced by the thickness and material of the strings; primarily, however, it is the size and shape of the resonating body and especially the material, density, and thickness of the soundboard that determine the sound of an instrument

Types of instruments

Lutes

Probably the most widely distributed type of stringed instrument in the world is the lute (the word is used here to designate the family and not solely the lute of Renaissance Europe). The characteristic structure consists of an enclosed sound chamber, or resonator, with strings passing over all or part of it, and a neck along which the strings are stretched. Players move their fingers up and down the neck, thus shortening the vibrating portion of the strings and producing various pitches.

Harps

With three fundamental components—several strings of uneven length, a resonator, and a neck—instruments of the harp family exhibit an extraordinary variety of constructions. The strings of a so-called open harp are attached at one end to the soundboard of the resonator; at the other end, they are attached to the instrument’s neck, which extends away from the resonator, either in an arch or at a sharp angle.

Lyres

The lyre family, though it was of great importance in the ancient centres of Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece, is now found only in a few areas of East Africa. A lyre is made from an oval, round, or rectangular sound chamber (usually skin-bellied); from this resonator two arms protrude; they are joined at the top by a crosspiece; the strings extend from this crosspiece over the belly, with which they are connected by a bridge. These strings are not normally stopped but are allowed to vibrate throughout their entire length when plucked by the performer.

Zithers

The least-complex zither type of instrument is the musical bow, shaped very much like a hunter’s bow. (The musical bow is sometimes classified as a harp.) The bow’s single string is tapped or struck, and the pitch can be varied by varying the tension of the string or by using the player’s mouth as a resonator and varying its size and shape, thus emphasizing different harmonics. It is a favourite instrument in equatorial Africa and Brazil, and it is also common in New Guinea.

Guitar

The guitar originally had four courses of strings, three double, the top course single, that ran from a violin-like pegbox to a tension bridge glued to the soundboard, or belly; the bridge thus sustained the direct pull of the strings. In the belly was a circular sound hole, often ornamented with a carved wooden rose. The 16th-century guitar was tuned C–F–A–D′, the tuning of the centre four courses of the lute and the vihuela.

Banjo

A musical instrument with a drum-like body, a fretted neck, and usually four or five strings which may be plucked or strummed

A ukulele is one of those instruments that are unique. Originated in Hawaii, the ukulele has played, and still plays a valuable role in the culture of this island. A lot of folks whose knowledge about stringed instruments ends at the display of their local guitar store have a lot of misconceptions about ukuleles.

Mandolin

 A musical instrument of the lute family that has a usually pear-shaped body and fretted neck and four to six pairs of string

Double bass

A stringed instrument, the largest and lowest member of the violin family. Range: almost three octaves upwards from E in the space between the fourth and fifth leger lines below the bass staff. It is normally bowed in classical music, but it is very common in a jazz or dance band, where it is practically always played pizzicaton.

Electric bass

The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses.