I LOVE ORCHESTRAL STRINGS. They are my fave section of the classical orchestra (followed closely by the brass and horns). They’re just SO VERSATILE – there are so many different techniques and tone colours you can make with string instruments, which means that their emotional range (I would argue) is enormous.
This makes them, without doubt, one of THE MOST USEFUL weapons in the composer’s arsenal when writing music for media, where emotion is generally the top consideration. They make audiences feel stuff. Super handy.
(Disclaimer: I’m biased. I play the violin. It’s the instrument I know the most about. But there’s a reason I wanted to learn to play it in the first place. IT’S THE COOLEST.
What is a Bowed String Instrument?
An orchestral string instrument is made of a wooden box with four or five strings held in tension. A bow is used to make the sound (usually) – it’s a wooden stick with a hank of hair stretched across it. From smallest to largest, the orchestral string instruments are violin, viola, cello (technically violoncello, but that rarely gets used except in very formal spaces) and double bass.
So How Do These AWESOME instruments make their MAGNIFICENT sound?
The bow pulls hair across the strings, which causes the string to vibrate. The vibrations travel into the air inside the box – called the ‘body’ of the instrument. The wooden box amplifies the sound, which then travels out of f-holes in the top of the body.
The variations in nuance of the sound from one instrument to the next depend on the kind of wood, the age of the wood, the shape of the box and angle of the neck, and the various methods used in making the body.
Placing a finger on the string makes the string shorter, which makes the sound it produces higher in pitch. The shorter the string, the higher the pitch, and vice versa.
Alternatively, you can ‘pluck’ the strings with a finger, just like you would a sitar or guitar.
Here are all the techniques I chuffing love to use in composition
- Slides – known variously as portamenti and glissandi (written down you’ll see port. or gliss.). The careful, deliberate use of slides is proper awesome. It feels like sighing, or coming to rest; they’re also really good at conveying a sense of weariness. I used slides in a low cello melody in ‘The Little Boats’ from Flood:
It’s also a feature of Disco! Here’s my ‘DiscoCat’ from StarDog and Turbocat:
- Harmonics – both ‘natural’ and ‘false’ – very high pitched, seriously eerie and atmospheric, especially en masse. Slides between false harmonics are THE BEST.
Here it is in action in my track ‘I’m in… Space’ from StarDog and TurboCat around 40-52s
- Sul pont. (sul ponticello) – where the bow is played very near the bridge (it literally translates as ‘on the bridge’). The bridge is a little bit of wood that sticks up off the body of the instrument, and the strings are stretched across it. The colour of the note sounds different depending on how close or far away the bow plays from this bridge. Very close to the bridge, the bow can make some proper eerie effects.
In my track ‘Body in the Water’ from Flood, around 2:32, listen to the sliding, haunting melody on the cello (did I mention I like slides?):
- Col legno – translates as ‘with the wood’ of the bow, instead of the hair. A player will flip the bow upside down or on its side. In the latter case, there’s still a bit of hair brushing the stringsso you can still hear a bit of pitch in the note produced – so this works for anything melodic, with a tune. When it’s without any hair touching the string it’s almost purely a heavy, wooden, tapping sound, with a little bit of the strings ringing out after being bounced off of. Brilliant in lower strings (cellos and basses) for a more rhythmic percussive sound.
In my track ‘Bar Brawl’, around 0:14-0:47. The wooden, clacky rhythmic hits are cellos and basses whacking and bouncing the bow wood against the string.
- Spiccato – quickly bouncing the bow on very short, usually rapid strokes. Choppy and precise. MUCH drama.
Hear it in my track ‘Hunting the Whale 1’ from The White Whale, right from the get-go:
- Playing behind the bridge – a squeaky, scrapy sound useful for horror effects. eg
In the atmospheric, ambient soundscape to They Only Come At Night (2007) – from the start, the wailing banshee-type sound is me on violin :
- Random high pizzicato – a staple of Mark Snow’s The X-Files’ score: proper creepy. Makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Pizzicato (written pizz.) is where the string is plucked with fingers. Twang.
In ‘Toilet Tooms’, around 3:52-4:14:
Other cool things about bowed orchestral strings
- IMHO (I’m biased tho) – bowed strings have the most varied palette of sounds of all the orchestral instruments.
- they’re great at very fast runs and arpeggio patterns – they’re here in Danny Elfman’s Spider-Man (2002) score, around 1:06-1:20 especially.
- Strings have a very wide range of dynamics (louds and softs), and they can do true pppp (the more p’s you write, the quieter it is – really the quietest sound in all the land, quieter than a mouse! Yes, it’s true) is possible, unlike wind, brass and some percussion.
- From a practical point of view, you can ask string session players to do difficult stuff for long periods of time and they don’t get nearly as tired as wind and brass players. Blowing air is more exhausting than moving your arm back and forth and up and down for long periods of time.
There are other techniques and tricks used with strings – this isn’t comprehensive, these are just the parts that spark joy for me.
Hope you enjoyed my little love letter about how chuffing awesome and useful the strings are, and now you might be able to hear some of these awesome techniques in the music that accompanies the theatre, film, television, games and ads you experience in future. YAY STRINGS!
Image: Credit