These include the piano, the clavichord, and the harpsichord.
Some instruments that have strings have attached keyboards that the player uses instead of directly manipulating the strings. The aeolian harp employs a very unusual method of sound production: the strings are excited by the movement of the air. A well-known use of col legno for orchestral strings is the Gustav Holst's "Mars" movement from The Planets suite. This yields a percussive sound along with the pitch of the note. Violin family string instrument players are occasionally instructed to strike the string with the side of the bow, a technique called col legno. The third common method of sound production in stringed instruments is to strike the string. Rarely, the guitar can be played with a bow (rather than plucked) for unique effects. Other bowed instruments are the rebec, hardingfele, nyckelharpa, kokyū, erhu, igil, sarangi and K'ni. Bowing the instrument's string causes a stick-slip phenomenon to occur, which makes the string vibrate.Īncestors of the modern bowed string instruments are the rebab of the Islamic Empires, the Persian kamanche and the Byzantine lira. The bow consists of a stick with many hairs stretched between its ends. They are usually categorized by the technique used to make the strings vibrate (or by the primary technique, in the case of instruments where more than one may apply.) The three most common techniques are plucking, bowing and striking.īowing ( Italian: Arco) is a method used in some string instruments, including the violin, viola, cello, and the double bass (of the violin family) and the old viol family.
Types of playing techniques For a full list, see List of string instruments.Īll string instruments produce sound from one or more vibrating strings, transferred to the air by the body of the instrument (or by a pickup in the case of electronically amplified instruments). It is also possible to divide the instruments into groups focused on how the instrument is played.