Alternatively, it may derive by folk etymology from kitgut or kitstring — the dialectal word kit, meaning fiddle, having at some point be confused with the word kit for a young cat, the word kit being possibly derived from Welsh.
In the 16th ctury a kit was a small fiddle used by dancing teachers, a name probably derived from a shorting of Old glish cythere, from Latin cithara, from Greek kithara (see guitar).
Historically, catgut was the most common material for the strings of harps, lutes, violins, violas, cellos, double basses, acoustic guitars, and other stringed musical instrumts, as well as the heads of older marching snare drums.
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Most musical instrumts produced today use strings with cores made of other materials, gerally steel or synthetic polymer. Gut strings are the natural choice for many classical and baroque string players,
And gut strings are still most commonly preferred in concert-tsion pedal/grand and some lever harps because they give a richer, darker sound as well as withstanding high tsion within low alto, tor, and high-bass ranges.
Many acoustic guitarists moved away from gut strings in the early 1900s wh the C. F. Martin & Company introduced steel strings, which gave greater volume to the guitar. The demand for steel came from semble players, who couldn't make themselves heard clearly without it.
Pros And Cons Of Gut Strings
Within a few years the majority of Martin guitars were made with steel strings to accommodate the demand. After World War II, most classical and flamco guitarists switched from catgut to the new nylon strings for their greater smoothness, durability, and stability of intonation.
Musicians believed the best were from Naples, though Rome and other Italian cities also produced excellt strings. Today high quality gut strings are produced mostly in Italy, Germany, and the United States. They are also made elsewhere, for example in India and Morocco, for local use.
Catgut suture was once a widely used material in surgical settings. Catgut sutures remain in use in developing countries where they are locally less expsive and easier to obtain. Catgut treated with chromium salts, known as chromic catgut, is also used in surgery.
Strings And Tuning Of 19th Century Guitars
Natural gut is still used as a high-performance string in tnis racquets, although it had more popularity in the past and is being displaced by synthetic strings.
To prepare catgut, workers clean the small intestines, free them from any fat, and steep them in water. Th they scrape off the external membrane with a blunt knife, and steep the intestines again for some time in potassium hydroxide. Th they smooth and equalize the intestines by drawing them out. Lean animals yield the toughest gut.
Next, they twist the prepared gut strands together to make string. String diameter is determined by the thickness of the individual guts, and by the number used. A thin string, such as a violin E, uses only three or four guts, whereas a double bass string may use twty or more. After twisting and drying, workers polish the strings to the required diameter.
What Are Guitar Strings Made Of?
Before the twtieth ctury, the strings were simply rubbed with an abrasive to smooth them. Today they are gerally ground down to the desired diameter using a cterless grinder. After drying and polishing, workers bleach and disinfect the strings using sulfur dioxide, dye them if necessary, and sort them into sizes.
Catgut sutures are normally treated with a chromium salt solution to resist body zymes to slow the absorption process. These are called catgut chromic sutures; untreated catgut sutures are called catgut plain sutures.String selection is a matter of personal preference, and depends not just on the violin being played, but also on one’s technical level, the colours the violinist wishes to produce with the bow and the gauge required. I look for sensitivity under my fingers, something I can only get with the more pliable gut string. It also makes my left-hand gliding technique more expressive. For me, gut strings offer a warmer quality of sound, especially on the A. They also make the E string even more brilliant. Listen to recordings of the great artists of the past and notice the warm and personal sound. It’s quite different from that provided by contemporary artists on synthetic strings.
Gut these days, both covered and uncovered, seems to me much more consistent than it used to be (either that or I’ve become much less fussy), and I don’t find the break-in a problem. The playing-in period becomes part of our natural exploration of sound colour. It only takes a few hours of hard playing for gut strings to reach their peak, and they remain there for a long time, until they eventually unwind, fray or snap. We might get the odd string that whistles or is a bit slow to reach perfection, and then we have to be brutal and discard it. Contrast this with synthetics. Granted, their pitch stabilises quicker than gut, but most sound truly awful when new. And once the first few hours of playing are over, they start a slow, miserable decline. Some last only a month at most. Eventually we find that we are uninspired by our instrument: worn out synthetic strings lose all those tasty high harmonics!
Can I Put Steel Strings On A Baritone Ukulele?
Are there any technical tricks to using gut? Yes. I clearly remember the first time I picked up an instrument with uncovered gut strings – I could hardly make a sound. It’s important to draw the bow rather than dig it in. Too much pressure with the first finger on the bow just dampens the sound, and can even stop it altogether. It is also important to use the big supporting muscles in the stomach and back, and let the arm, hand and then the bow just hang on the end of our torso. After that, clever adjustments of the fingers on the right hand can be used for articulations and inflections. Of course, all these things can help when using synthetic and metal strings, too. Moreover, the contact point (the place between the bridge and fingerboard where the bow meets the string) becomes much more critical with gut. We need to become adept at steering the bow around to get the contact point that we are after. Possibly the most important aspect when playing with gut is the need to be aware that the tilt of the bow makes a big difference to the tone colour. If our bow hair is too flat, the sound will become choked.
I’m always amazed at how easy it is to play on metal strings compared with ones made of pure gut. On metal strings, all the imperfections that easily occur when playing on gut strings are gone: for example, less projection on gut requires a focused sound to find the elusive sweet spot - the sort of difference you would find between playing tennis with a wooden racket, strung for slower speeds, and a modern tennis racket built for hitting hard. Gut strings, being made of natural material, are also much more vulnerable to atmospheric changes, mostly due to humidity levels. Add to this a Baroque bow that is almost twice as light as a modern one, with fewer hairs, and suddenly expressive playing is much more challenging.
What I find most enjoyable and interesting about playing on gut strings and with period bows, is the challenge of looking for sonorities. Gut strings have amazing blending capacities and ranges of expression, and simultaneously invite and challenge you to explore deeply the musical language of the vast quartet repertoire from the Classical and early Romantic eras.
What Did People Make Guitar Strings From 200 Years Ago?
I have always felt strongly that gut strings and period bows demand a much greater awareness of sound production and the different ways of crafting the sound. Each note becomes more detailed while at the same time being very sensitive, demanding from the player a higher awareness of its life. The sensation of playing is so refreshing. In discovering this ‘period approach’ I quickly felt there was so much more to making sound than I had ever imagined. It has been a great learning process, especially in regards to the bow hold, the vocal qualities of the notes produced, and the detailed pronunciation and variety of characterisations.
I think that gut strings are very nice: you can make some very horrible sounds, in the best possible way; and you can also get some incredibly human, tender sounds from them. Sometimes I really hate them, because they are unreliable, they break and I think, ‘Is it really worth it?’ Then I hear them and I think, ’Yeah’.
With a conventional modern set-up you tend to put the bow on the string and then start the bow moving to coax the sound out. With a gut string and a Baroque bow that approach doesn’t work - the string chokes and you get a horrible grinding sound. [Royal Conservatoire of Scotland professor Jennifer Ward Clarke] showed me how to start the note from just above the string, a bit like a pizzicato attack so that you immediately get the string ringing. You then just keep it breathing as you draw the bow across. She taught that
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