To sound lower pitches while remaining a workable length – a crucialĭevelopment for the design of bass instruments. The string would increase its mass per unit length, thus enabling strings Pitch is low stretched out it becomes much thinner and vibrates quickerįrom Mersenne's work came the discovery in Italy that winding wire around It isĮasy enough to see this by plucking an elastic band: held flaccidly its

Tension will sound higher than a short, fat string at low tension. Of its tension, its diameter, and its density.

Pitch a string sounds is not only related to its length. Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), a great French thinker, proved that the Made from between five and seven threads the lower strings on the double Washed, scoured, and sliced into strips, then twisted into threads beforeīeing bleached and polished. Typically, gut strings were made from the small intestines of a young sheep. Have been discovered in excavations of ancient Egyptian sites dating fromġ500 BC, and there is plenty of evidence of their Gut strings have been used for making music for thousands of years. There are three types of stringed instrument,ĭefined by the method of sound production: bowed, plucked, and struck. They form the backbone of almost every substantial musical culture, probablyīecause of the ease with which they can be tuned, their clarity of pitch,Īnd their great adaptability. Are those in which sound is generated from a vibrating string held in tension.

Stringed instrument