Violin Family - Uses

Uses

The instruments of the violin family are the most used bowed string instruments in the world today. Although all share a place in classical music, they are also used to a lesser degree in jazz, electronic music, rock, and other types of popular music, where they are often amplified, or simply created to be used as electric instruments. The violin is also used extensively in fiddle music, country music, and folk music. The double bass plays an indispensable part in both classical and jazz music forms.

One of the most popular and standardized groupings in classical chamber music, the string quartet, is composed entirely of instruments from the violin family: two violins, one viola and one cello. This similarity in the manner of sound production allows string quartets to blend their tone colour and timbre more easily than less homogeneous groups. This is particularly notable in comparison to the standard wind quintet, which, although composed entirely of wind instruments, includes four fundamentally different ways of producing musical pitch.