Chordophones: One Or More Strings Under Tension

A chordophone's sound comes from a stretched string vibrating between two fixed points. Everything else — the body, the neck, the pickups — exists to hold that string at the right tension and make its vibration audible.

How you get the string moving

Plucked — guitar, harp, harpsichord, koto. Bowed — violin, cello, erhu, the friction of horsehair dragging the string into vibration. Struck — piano (hammers), cimbalom, hammered dulcimer. Hammer-and-key — the piano is really a struck chordophone wearing a keyboard costume.

How the body shapes the sound

A single vibrating string is barely audible on its own — you need a resonating body (or, on an electric guitar, a pickup) to actually push air. That's why an acoustic guitar and its solid-body electric cousin can share almost the same string layout and sound worlds apart.