Other String Instruments

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. more...

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Types of string instruments

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

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 Þór (Jónsi) Birgisson, singer and guitar player of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós has made use of the technique).

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. It should be noted that 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).

Read more at Wikipedia.org