How does the violin make sound?

Isn’t it strange that a wooden box and a stick can express the gamut of human emotions and evoke specific feelings and memories? How exactly does this happen?

Sound production happens differently on acoustic and electric violins. Let’s cover acoustics first.

Step One: The strings vibrate. This can be done in one of two ways: plucking or bowing the string. Plucking (or using pizzicato) is the act of using the finger to pull the string. Bowing is pulling the horse hair across the string. Both methods cause the string to vibrate and create a sound wave. This vibration causes a sound wave.

Step Two: The sound wave travels to the bridge. The bridge acts as a conductor: the sound waves travel through the bridge into the body of the instrument.

Step Three: The body of the instrument vibrates, creating an audible sound. The pitch of the sound is determined by the string length and frequency. When a violinist places his fingers down on the strings, the length of the string changes and therefore so does the pitch.

This entire process takes less than a fraction of a second.

Now let’s discuss how an electric violin makes sound.

Step One: The strings vibrate. This occurs when a player either plucks or bows the strings, as described above.

Step Two: The sound wave travels to the bridge.

Step Three: The sound waves are transported into an amplifier. This is where acoustic violins and electric violins differ. The amplifier than decodes the sound wave and broadcasts it so that it can be heard. If you’ve ever played an electric violin without an amplifier, you know that the sound is very soft, much softer than an acoustic violin. This is because the bodies of electric violins are usually made out of carbon fiber or some other material that does not vibrate as much as wood, thus producing a much softer sound.