Articulation and vibrato on the violin

Overview.
Different bowing gestures or articulations give the violin a range of different sounds. The differences are chiefly in the transient sounds at the beginning and end of the notes, and in the envelope: the way the sound varies over time. These are illustrated with sound files and oscillograms. Vibrato - a small cyclic movement of one of the left fingers on the string - changes the pitch of the note played. It also changes the timbre. This timbre vibrato is very important to the characteristic sound of the violin. This page explains why, using sound files and graphical representations of the sound and its spectrum.

Contents Articulation and the sound of the violin. A look at several different bowing
gestures. o o o o o o o
A violin made by

Col legno Coll Pizzicato Spiccato Sul ponticello Sul tasto Tremolo Vibrato and the sound of the violin. An
analysis of pitch and timbre vibrato and their importance to violin sound.

John McLennan

More detail and other links

Articulation and the sound of the violin In the middle of a long, sustained note, each vibration of the violin string and each cycle of the sound it produces is nearly identical to the one that preceded it. The string undergoes Helmholtz motion, which is shown in animation in Bows and strings. This is what physicists would call steady state. However, much of the interest in violin sounds comes from the transients: the short lived effects at the beginning and end of each note. To the violinist, these are achieved by different articulations or bowing styles. All of the examples in this section show oscillograms and sound files. The oscillogram

plots the voltage from the microphone (in linear but arbitrary units) as a function of time (measured in seconds). The voltage is proportional to the sound pressure, which was measured one metre from the violin in a room with very low reverberation. The violinist is student Tricia Ho, who worked in the Music Acoustics lab in 2005. In each case, the first oscillogram is that of the sound file. A section of it is highlighted. The highlighted section is then shownin the next oscillogram, with the time axis magnified. Here we are not concerned with the details of the waveform, but rather with its envelope, ie the way the magnitude of the wave changes over time. You may wish to revise Bows and strings, Strings and harmonics or An introduction to violin acoustics before proceeding. Col legno Col legno is an unusual articulation. The Italian col legno means 'with the wood' and that is just what the violinist does: s/he plays the string with the wood of the back of the bow, making a rattling sound on the string. In the oscillograms below, notice the loud initial transient as the wood strikes the bow percussively. The magnitude of the sound then decreases rapidly, because the wood does not input energy effectively as it is dragged over the strings (unlike the Helmholtz motion produced by the bow in its normal use).

Sound files of col legno.

Coll The French coll means 'glued'. The lower part of the bow (which can exert more force) strikes the string rapidly. The sound builds up rapidly at the start of each note, and then slows smoothly (perhaps like two surfaces with fresh glue?) before lifting off.

Sound files of coll. Coll is somewhat similar to saltando, the upper part of the bow. Pizzicato

except that the latter is performed with

Pizzicato means plucked with the finger. The fleshy ball of the finger is used, rather than the nail. Once the string is released from the finger, there is no effective mechanism for putting more energy into the string (although violinists may try to prolong the sound by adding vibrato with the left hand). Consequently, the sound has a moderately large magnitude initially, but decays rapidly away.

Sound files ofpizzicato.

Spiccato The Italian spiccato means 'enunciated'. The bow lands percussively on the string and remains in contact while it is drawn across a little. The attack (the initial transient) is not so rapid as in col legno, because the bow hair is softer than the wood. Further, there is time for the bow to provide some continuous input of energy before it 'bounces' off the string.

Sound files of spiccato. Spiccato is somewhat similar to Sul ponticello

sautill.

The Italian sul ponticello means 'on the bridge'. Bowing the string over the bridge, it is virtually impossible to set up stable, regular Helmholtz motion, and rather easy to excite, at least briefly, some harmonic Helmholtz motion (both are described in Bows and strings). This gives a peculiar and irregular sound, with lots of high harmonics.

Sound files of sul ponticello. Sul ponticello contrasts with sul tasto: in the latter, the string is bowed over the fingerboard, which is unusually far from the bridge. Sul tasto (next heading) produces much less power in the high harmonics, which we show by comparing the spectra below. The first spectrum is for a note played sul ponticello, obtained from the sound files shown in oscillograms above: note the weak fundamental and the strong harmonics. The second spectrum is for the same note played sul tasto, ie with the bow well away from the bridge. We discuss sul tasto further below, but notice in the spectra that playing sul tasto produces a sound that is relatively weak in high harmonics.

Sul tasto Sul tasto means 'on the fingerboard': the string is bowed over the fingerboard, near the end. This position produces a sound with weaker high harmonics than normal playing (bow between fingerboard and bridge) and much weaker than for sul ponticello. It is rather similar to flautando, which has a sound somewhat like that of a flute: less strong in high harmonics and with a little broad band sound as well. The spectra above contrast sul ponticello and sul tasto, so it is interesting to compare the sound files, too.

Sound files of sul tasto.

Tremolo In tremolo, the bow remains in contact with the string, but the bowing direction is changed rapidly. The rate of bowing is usually left to the performer so, in a violin or cello section, a tremolo note will have usually have bows moving in random phase.

Sound files of tremolo.

Vibrato and the sound of the violin Vibrato is an important part of the playing style and sound of the violin and related instruments, especially in the music of the romantic and most post-romantic periods. The regular rocking backwards and forwards of the finger on the left hand that stops the string changes the length of the string (and also, slightly, the tension). This causes a cyclical variation in pitch. However, as mentioned in An introduction to violin acoustics, this has the effect of changing the timbre of the instrument as well. Briefly, the gain of the violin body is a strong function of frequency. Consequently, even a modest proportional change in the frequency of one of the higher harmonics of a note will change its loudness, sometimes dramatically. So the spectral envelope of the sound varies strongly during one cycle of vibrato. (For an excellent paper about this, see J. Meyer: "On the Tonal Effect of String Vibrato", Acustica, 76 283-291 (1992).) Let's see how important it is. Tricia plays the note A#4 (sul A) first without and then with vibrato. A#4 senza vibrato. A#4 con vibrato. Here is an oscillogram of the second sound (the note con vibrato). Note the regular changes in the envelope, which varies about six times per second - a typical rate for vibrato and a comfortable rate to rock one's finger.

At each of the two times indicated by the vertical dashed lines, we calculate the spectrum of the note. These are shown below.

First, notice that the pitch is different - this is clearer for the high harmonics than for the fundamental because, while the proportional change in frequency is the same for all harmonics, its absolute value is greater for high frequencies. Second, notice the differences in the shape of the spectra. At the bottom of the tremolo pitch cycle (blue spectrum),the second, third, fifth and thirteenth harmonics are at least several decibels stronger than those of the note at the top of the tremolo pitch cycle (red spectrum). (Six decibels is twice as much power: see What is a decibel?.) So the violin note con vibrato has varying pitch, and strongly varying spectrum. Why does this make such a huge difference? The main reason is that human perceptions have evolved to notice things that change in time. Further, our auditory system works

well for human languages, which encode most of the information in the spectral envelope. (This scientific paper has some comparisons.) So variations in the spectral envelope are readily perceived, and they make the sound more interesting or 'alive'. The effect of reverberation Now all of the sounds we have heard above were recorded with a close microphone and in room with very little reverberation. This means that we hear something like the sound that is output by the instrument. Commonly, one hears an instrument from some distance, and in a room that provides reverberation. So one hears the direct sound coming from the instrument added to the sound that is reflected off walls, floor and ceiling. In the case of a note senza vibrato, this makes relatively little difference. The frequencies of all the reflections are the same, so they all add up to make a relatively simple note. In contrast, when playing con vibrato, the delayed notes may have different frequencies, and that difference changes with time. This gives rise to complex interference effects. In the sound files linked below, reverberation has been added to the sound files linked above. A#4 senza vibrato. A#4 con vibrato. (Both sounds with reverb.) So, the complicated frequency response of the violin, when combined with vibrato, results in a sound that is more complicated and 'alive' than a note without vibrato, and this sound is further complicated when reverberation is present. For more information, see An introduction to violin acoustics Strings and standing waves (a simple introduction to vibrating strings). Bows and strings (a simple introduction to that interaction). Chladni patterns (experimental results showing the vibration of the plates of violins). The research papers of John McLennan, PhD student in Music Acoustics at UNSW. A study of torsional waves in the bowed string, and how they are strongly coupled to the normal transverse waves during normal playing. How do violins change with playing and environmental changes over time?: a report after the first three years of a long-term study. Acoustics for violin and guitar makers by Erik Jansson. And finally, yes, we felt obliged to put on our FAQ some comments about that hoary old question "what was the S Speech and helium speech, with a brief introduction to the physics of the voice This short document gives a very brief description of the source-filter model of voiced speech used. It uses this to explain some of the most noticeable features of helium speech, which it illustrates with sound files. If this isn't clear, see this more complete Introduction to voice acoustics. The source-filter model of the vocal tract

The vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx produces a varying air flow which may be treated as a periodic source (A). (A periodic signal is cyclic: its motion is reproduced after a time interval called its period. A consequence is that its spectrum is made up of harmonics. Go to 'What is a sound spectrum?' for an introduction.) This source signal is input to the vocal tract. The tract behaves like a variable filter (B) in that its response is different for different frequencies. It is variable because, by changing the position of your tongue, jaw etc you can change that frequency response. The input signal and the vocal tract, together with the radiation properties of the mouth, face and external field, produce a sound output (C). Because the source is harmonic, we can say that the gain of the tract (B) is sampled at multiples of the pitch frequency F0. In the case sketched at left below, the resonances R1 and R2 can be determined approximately from the peaks in the envelope of the sound spectrum. These peaks are called the formants (F1 and F2). (See What is a formant?)

Note that the detail in the spectrum is easier to see if F0 is low, e.g. for a low pitched

man's voice (diagram at left), than it is for a child's voice - shown at right. The lowest resonance is determined to a considerable extent by the end effect of your mouth: if you lower your jaw, R1 rises. R2 is affected by the jaw position too, but it is primarily affected by the position of the constriction inside your mouth. Moving your tongue forwards and backwards changes R2 (and also R1, but to a lesser extent). Maps of (R1,R2) for various accents of English are given on Sounds of World English. Nearly all information in speech is in the range 200 Hz - 8 kHz. (The telephone carries only 300 Hz - 4 kHz but speech is reasonably intelligible.) The pitch is determined by the spacing of harmonics as much as or more than by the fundamental. Thus you can tell the pitch of a man's voice on the phone even though the fundamental of that signal is not present. Note that the size of the vocal tract (~170 mm long) gives resonances around 500 Hz and above. In fact a closed tube of this length is a functional approximation of the tract for the vowel "er" as in "herd". For this 'neutral' vowel, the first five resonances of the author's vocal tract are indeed at values of about 500, 1500, 2500, 3500 and 4500 Hz. What helium does to speech You can investigate the model described above by changing the speed of sound. Inhaling helium changes the frequencies of the resonances, and therefore of the formants they produce (See What is a formant?). As you would expect from the model above, it does not change the pitch, which is determined by the tension, mass and geometry of vocal folds, and some other effects. It does however change the timbre. In speech, you may have the illusion that the pitch has changed because one doesn't think much about pitch when listening to speech. To make it clear, you can sing with and without a lung containing a substantial fraction of He and listen.Warnings: He is suffocating and conducts heat well. After one inhalation of He, breathe air normally for a few minutes. In a gas cylinder, He is under high pressure. Do not inhale directly from a gas cylinder. Fill a toy balloon and inhale from that. Okay, having read those warnings, you might not want to try. So I've put the recordings of my experiment below. The first diagram shows a schematic picture of the spectrum (power vs frequency) for the sound of the voice made with a particular configuration of the vocal tract filled with air. The solid line is the spectral envelope; the vertical lines are the harmonics of the vibration of the vocal folds. The second diagram shows the effect of replacing air with helium, but keeping the tract configuration the same (i.e. trying to pronounce the same vowel as before, but with a throat full of helium). The speed of sound is greater, so the resonances occur at higher frequencies, as do the formants they produce: the second formant has now been shifted right off scale in this diagram. The flesh in your vocal folds still vibrates at the same* frequency, however, so the harmonics occur at the same frequencies.

What does this sound like? Obviously the helium makes a big difference to the sound of the voice. Audio File File Format Ordinary Speech Helium Speech Pitch in Air Pitch in Helium If you do the experiment with someone who has some experience with singing or music, (and if s/he doesn't laugh too much on hearing helium voice) then the pitch will be the same in the two cases. The pitch is determined by the frequencies of the harmonics and these have not changed*. The speech does, however, sound 'like Donald Duck'. There is less power at low frequencies so the sound is thin and squeaky. This alteration to the timbre changes vowels in a spectacular way. Although we can understand whole sentences (using contextual clues) we find that individual vowels are very difficult to identify. (By the way, an articulate but otherwise standard duck would have a shorter vocal tract than ours so, even while breathing air, Donald would have resonances at rather higher frequencies than ours.) * If you keep the muscle tensions the same, that is, the frequencies will not change much. There could be a small change because the less dense He loads the vocal folds a bit less than the air, but this effect is slight. The effect on the resonances is large, however. Its size depends on how pure the He in your vocal tract is. More about voice acoustics The very brief account above addresses only vowels. Our Introduction to voice acoustics is a much broader introduction. It provides both a simple overview, and a rather more detailed account. Throughout, it suggests a range of experiments for the reader to try none of the others involving helium.