Types of String Instruments

String instruments are among the oldest known instruments, dating back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians. The sound and pitch of these instruments varies by the string's length and thickness, the tension on the string, the body of the instrument, and the soundboard to which the string is attached. A soundboard make the music audible as sound bounces off it, although modern instruments generally use electric amplification. There are three classifications for string instruments, although instruments can temporarily crossover into other categories.

Pluck

Played by plucking or strumming the strings with fingers, fingernails, picks, or plectra, pluck instruments include some of the best-known instruments in modern music, including the guitar and banjo. This category also includes traditional favorites like the lyre and harpsichord.

Bow

Bow instruments are played by pulling a stick strung with hair, usually horsehair, across the strings to make them vibrate. Most bow instruments, including the violin and cello, can be played by plucking, too.

Strike

Instruments played by a hammer striking the strings fall into this category. Famous striking-string instruments include the piano and dulcimer, although some guitars can now be played by hammer. The clavichord uses an alternate form of percussion by relying on a brass tangent, or wedge, to push strings onto a hard surface to make sound. Bow instruments can be struck, as when a violist uses the back of her bow to play a musical piece, and strike instruments can be plucked.

Alternate Names

String instruments can also be classified as lutes, harps, or zithers. Lutes are string instruments with necks, like guitars, violins, and mandolins, while harps are strung to a frame. Zithers, including autoharps, dulcimers, and pianos, contain strings mounted to a body.

Unusual String Instruments

An autoharp in concert

An Aeolian harp stretches strings of various thicknesses across a wooden frame and is then left in a windy spot, often an open window, so that the wind creates music in a modified version of wind chimes. The autoharp relies on dampers to silence chords not necessary for a given note. The musician plucks only the exposed strings needed to produce a given sound.

The hurdy-gurdy is a percussion-string instrument in which a rosined wheel causes a hammer to strike strings inside an organ box. A soundboard makes the music audible. Unlike many string instruments, the hurdy-gurdy has drone strings that play a constant pitch while other strings provide the melody.

Moving a magnet over steel-string instruments creates music by vibrating the strings.

Ancient String Instruments

One of the oldest string instruments still being played is the yue qin, a Chinese lute dating to 200 BC. It is nicknamed the moon guitar because its round base resembles a full moon. The rebab is an 8th century Arabic bow instrument, while the kanoune is a 10th century Arabic instrument similar to a piano. The spike fiddle, named for the spike on which it rests, is an 8th century Persian lute without frets. Europeans of the 11th century played the psaltery, a forerunner to the zither, by plucking it or using a bow. The ancient santoor, played with hammers, is still popular in Indian folk music today.

References

• Musical Escapades

Resources

• World Musical Instruments