String Energy

Experiment With Strings

The energy principle that works string instruments is called acoustic energy. You can do a simple experiment to learn how this principle works. Get a rubber band and stretch it until it is pretty tight. Now twang it and listen to the sound that it makes. Now stretch it just a little tighter and twang it again. It makes a higher pitched sound the tighter the rubber band is. That's how string instruments work. They all have strings that are stretched tightly on the instrument and left free to vibrate. How fast they vibrate (move to make sound) has to do with the pitch (highness and lowness) of the notes they sound. The pitch depends on how tight the strings are made.

A lot of stringed instruments are bowed, which means you use a bow to play them, but they can also be plucked or twanged. It really doesn't matter because the sound comes from the moving strings. The frame of the string instrument picks up the sound energy made by the strings and makes it stronger and richer. The frame is what makes the instruments in the string family have such a wide range of sound. This picture shows how the sound vibrates inside the frame of a string instrument.

Making Sound Energy with String Instruments

There are three different ways that you can make a note with string instruments.