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A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles, which are typically aural traditions—taught "by ear" rather than via written music.
The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. It can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a six-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the four-course guitar.
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument :
The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard that presses tangents—small wedges, typically made of wood—against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like most other acoustic stringed instruments, it has a sound board and hollow cavity to make the vibration of the strings audible.
In music, a bow is a tensioned stick which has hair coated in rosin affixed to it. It is moved across some part of a musical instrument to cause vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and bass, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
A bass musical instrument produces tones in the low-pitched range C4- C2. Basses belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles. Since producing low pitches usually requires a long air column or string, the string and wind bass instruments are usually the largest instruments in their families or instrument classes.
The vihuela is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of the lute in Italy and has a large resultant repertory. There were usually five or six doubled strings.
The baryton is a bowed string instrument similar to the viol, but distinguished by an extra set of plucked strings. It was in regular use in Europe until the end of the 18th century.
Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound.
The viola organista is a musical instrument designed by Leonardo da Vinci. It uses a friction belt to vibrate individual strings, with the strings selected by pressing keys on a keyboard. Leonardo's design has intrigued instrument makers for more than 400 years, but though similar instruments have been built, no extant instrument constructed directly from Leonardo's incomplete designs is known. Sometimes it is mistakenly referred to as the harpsichord viola, which is a different instrument.
The rebab is the name of several related string instruments that independently spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. The instrument is typically bowed, but is sometimes plucked. It is one of the earliest known bowed instruments, named no later than the 8th century, and is the parent of many bowed and stringed instruments.
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
The bowed clavier is a keyboard instrument strung with gut strings, the tone of which is produced by a steadily revolving, well rosined cylinder powered by a foot pedal, a mechanism similar to that found in the hurdy-gurdy.
Bass violin is the modern term for various 16th- and 17th-century bass instruments of the violin family. They were the direct ancestor of the modern cello. Bass violins were usually somewhat larger than the modern cello, but tuned to the same nominal pitches or sometimes one step lower. Contemporaneous names for these instruments include "basso de viola da braccio," "basso da braccio," or the generic term "violone," which simply meant "large fiddle." The instrument differed from the violone of the viol, or "viola da gamba" family in that like the other violins it had at first three, and later usually four strings, as opposed to five, six, or seven strings, it was tuned in fifths, and it had no frets. With its F-holes and stylized C-bouts it also more closely resembled the viola da braccio.
The harpsichord-viola is a hybrid musical instrument based on the designs of Leonardo da Vinci on folio 93r of the Codex Atlanticus. It's a different project from the viola organista. It is about the size of a child's toy piano. It weighs 33 pounds and straps to the musician's chest. It's unlike anything else in the orchestra. It has the strings of a violin but is played with a keyboard, and it's powered by the musician's legs as he walks. It's built with the materials that Leonardo would have had on hand, including wooden pegs and gears run by twine. In the folio of Leonardo, you can see that the instrument has a harness. So it was invented as a way to play a stringed instrument while marching. The leg pumps a wooden motor, which moves a long loop of horsehair through the instrument. When the player presses the keys, the strings move up against the loop.
Joseph Haydn wrote as many as 123 trios for the unusual combination of baryton, viola and cello, and three further trios for baryton, cello and violin are considered part of the series. As Sisman notes, they are the “most intensively cultivated genre” of Haydn’s early career.
Vulnicura Strings , or simply Vulnicura Strings, is an acoustic album released by Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk as a companion to her 2015 album, Vulnicura. Vulnicura Strings has been described as a more uncompromising and intimate take on Björk's breakup album, featuring strings-only versions of the Vulnicura tracks, with the omission of "History of Touches". Also the version of "Family" omits the vocals.
References
- ↑ Lewis, Randy. "A hunt for tickets and celebrities, set to music". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
- ↑ Smith, Ethan. "Da Vinci's Harp And Pakistani Bagpipes: A Day At America's Music Market". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
