Results 1 to 14 of 14

Thread: Stops?

  1. #1

    Default Stops?

    In music, a double stop is the act of playing two notes simultaneously on a melodic percussion instrument (like a marimba) or stringed instrument (for example, a violin or a guitar). In performing a double stop, two separate strings are depressed ("stopped") by the fingers, and bowed or plucked simultaneously (without a string change).
    A triple stop is the same technique applied to three strings; a quadruple stop applies to four strings. Double, triple, and quadruple stopping are collectively known as multiple stopping.
    So says Wikipedia.

    My question is: Why are they called (double...) "stops"? Why not something like "two-note phrases"? Is there something about how they were originally applied to original instruments that caused them to be called stops? Nowhere else in my readings about fretted instruments do I hear the term "stop the string (at the...fret)" used.

    Thanks

  2. #2

    Default Re: Stops?

    Quote Originally Posted by jmr_jmr View Post
    So says Wikipedia.

    My question is: Why are they called (double...) "stops"? Why not something like "two-note phrases"? Is there something about how they were originally applied to original instruments that caused them to be called stops? Nowhere else in my readings about fretted instruments do I hear the term "stop the string (at the...fret)" used.

    Thanks
    "two note phrase" implies a melodic structure while a double stop is a harmonic structure. Perhaps the use of "stop" is an extension of the device on an organ to create a note.

  3. #3
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Location
    Sarasota, Florida
    Posts
    298

    Default Re: Stops?

    Each position on the fretboard stops the core note of the string from resonating, and changes it to the higher note on the same string (or course of strings.) Don't know if that's the source of the term, but it's what I immediately thought when I first encountered that terminology. I'm pretty sure it has its roots in bowed instrument lexicons.
    Striving for mediocrity and perpetually falling short.

  4. #4
    Unfamous String Buster Beanzy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Cornwall & London
    Posts
    2,921
    Blog Entries
    5

    Default Re: Stops?

    Following on from what Mike said about the organ, we used always refer to stopping notes on the recorder with the fingers. It's used similarly in plumbing. I wouldn't be surprised if the term just transferred over from the minstrels playing flutes and whistles picked up stringed instruments.
    Eoin



    "Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin

  5. #5
    Carpe Mandolinium
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Hyde Park, Illinois
    Posts
    515

    Default Re: Stops?

    David Cowles nailed it. At least that seems to be the consensus.

    Some background:

    First off, it's often a good idea to hold some skepticism in ones head when reading unsigned Wikipedia articles. With regard to this particular article I would note:

    1. The opening line of the article is potentially misleading because it lists the marimba as the first example of an instrument capable of double stops (more on that later).

    2. The example captioned "Cello double stops...." illustrates two triple stops and one quadruple stop, but no double stop.

    3. A little further beyond what you quoted, you'll find this line: "The invention of the double-stop is generally credited to violinist Carlo Farina, whose Capriccio Stravagante (1627) was published in Dresden while he was Court-Violinist at Saxony.[1]" The citation goes to "Cecil Forsyth, William Bolcom (1982). Orchestration, p. 315" The cited book is in fact a 1982 reprint, edited and introduced by the great Bill Bolcom, of the 1935 second edition of Forsyth's Orchestration. The first edition was apparently printed in 1914, but one publication of the first edition that I've seen is dated 1929. Flawed though the citation may be, the ca. 1914 first edition does contain a footnote in the chapter on The Violin which is truncated but accurately reported in Wikipedia.

    More to the point--which is not double stopping but stopping, per se--and remaining with Mr. Forsyth briefly, eleven pages before addressing double stopping, he begins a lengthy discussion of the manner in which the violin produces pitches other than the open notes. In the very first sentence of this discussion he introduces the word stopping (italicized in the original) as a term-of-art to describe the means by which strings are shortened to achieve higher pitches. (He uses lightly touching [again, italicized in the original] to describe the method of producing harmonics.)

    Unfortunately, Mr. Forsyth does not provide us with a bibliography or other means of tracing his path to the origin of the term. I find it quite implausible that it was not until the year 1627 that somebody noticed that it was possible to play two notes at once on an instrument with several strings. I'd suggest that Mr. Farina was simply the first to write out a double stop in a printed and published music score, and that at most he coined the term to describe it.

    Rimsky-Korsakov, in his two-volume 1922 Principles of Orchestration is largely silent on the question of instrument technique, except when the information is necessary to the composer, so we find no mention of stopping in this work.

    Piston, in his 1955 Orchestration just backs into its use as common parlance: "The action of the left-hand fingers stopping the string firmly against the fingerboard...."

    The idea that the term came from the organ is an intriguing one, and certainly consistent with the way we use the term "organ stop" today. But an organ stop controls not pitch per se, but the rank of pipes sounded, with each pipe within the rank having a unique pitch. When we go back to what we know of the earliest organs, it becomes apparent that the way we of today commonly use the word "stop" is in a sense the opposite of its original meaning. On the earliest organs a stop was what we would describe as a stopper, like the stopper in the mouth of a bottle. Rather than serving to introduce a rank of pipes, its function was to stop the flow of air from the wind chest into a rank, thus silencing it; hence still-heard phrases of the sort, "Open the diapaison stop," or "Pull out all the stops." (the latter, BTW, not being synonymous with "full organ"). Still, I'm not convinced that this hypothesis is wrong. How much less technological knowledge and understanding of their instruments did musicians of the XI Century have than we have today?




    Now, back to that irksome mention of the marimba (and this will, believe it or not, touch on the recorder)...
    We generally don't think of keyboard instruments, of which the marimba is one, as playing multiple stops for the simple reason that they're designed to play multiple notes simultaneously. Would you call an eight-note chord on the piano an octuple stop? I wouldn't, but maybe some would. On the other hand, I have heard percussionists refer to playing two timpani simultaneously (a quite common occurrence) as a double stop, so maybe this usage is widespread among percussionists.

    While we do generally regard the term double (triple, etc) stop as referring to stringed instruments, it has certainly migrated elsewhere. Although the pitch-producing method is quite different from that of the strings, most brass instruments and some woodwinds, including the recorder, can play multiple notes, and such sonorities are commonly called double (triple, etc) stops. In fact, Carl Maria von Weber's Concertino in E Minor for Horn and Orchestra (That's French horn) contains a few triple stops for the soloist. And there are horn players who can execute them exquisitely.




    Now, appropos of nothing and just for fun: on the same page where Mr. Forsyth introduces the term 'stopping' he uses the word 'catgut,' to which he appends the following footnote:
    "Made from the entrails of the sheep. The word catgut, however, appears to be not a popular mistake but actually cat-gut, that is to say, entrails of the cat. It seems a pity to deprive the cat of this its only title to usefulness, but there is no record that fiddle-strings were ever so made. Murray suggests an alternative humorous derivation from the resemblance between caterwauling and fiddle-playing!




    And at this point, I'm thinking that everybody else out there is just wishing that I would STOP! So I will.
    Last edited by John McCoy; Sep-08-2012 at 11:26pm. Reason: omitted word
    == JOHN ==



    Music washes away from the soul the dust of every day life.

    --Berthold Auerbach



  6. The following members say thank you to John McCoy for this post:

    Griff 

  7. #6
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Location
    Sarasota, Florida
    Posts
    298

    Default Re: Stops?

    Thanks for affirming my intuitive definition of the term, John. Your additional bibliography was enlightening. Let's pick.
    Striving for mediocrity and perpetually falling short.

  8. #7
    Unfamous String Buster Beanzy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Cornwall & London
    Posts
    2,921
    Blog Entries
    5

    Default Re: Stops?

    Hi John

    I'm interested in why you go for the term coming from string instruments rather than being adopted by them from other types of instrument, and you mention a consensus but don't reference it.

    Thanks


    Eoin
    Eoin



    "Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin

  9. #8
    coprolite mandroid's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Outer Spiral Arm, of Galaxy, NW Oregon.
    Posts
    17,103

    Default Re: Stops?

    another name .. interval or diatonic harmony..

    chord partials 1st & 3rd, or 5th and 7th, Etc. to give you a harmony
    suggesting a chord
    though not playing all of the notes that make up the chord.
    writing about music
    is like dancing,
    about architecture

  10. #9
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    0.8 mpc from NGC224, upstairs
    Posts
    10,054

    Default Re: Stops?

    Confusion is reintroduced by the fact that on mandolin family instruments striking two courses at once is called a doublestop, even if one of them is open, i.e. not stopped at all.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  11. #10
    Registered User SincereCorgi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Bay Area, California
    Posts
    2,128

    Default Re: Stops?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    Confusion is reintroduced by the fact that on mandolin family instruments striking two courses at once is called a doublestop, even if one of them is open, i.e. not stopped at all.
    It's the same with bowed strings as well though, right? (At least it is in classical music... in folk music a useful term like 'drone' might be used in some situations.)

    I don't think there will be a very satisfying answer to this, my guess would be that it's an etymological oddity of English that probably developed by analogy with 'stopping' holes on woodwinds to produce different pitches, and then became 'double' when a second string was involved. It does appear to be used by some percussion sources, but I have never heard actual percussionists refer to simultaneous soundings of notes on timpani or marimba as a 'double-stop'.

  12. #11
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    0.8 mpc from NGC224, upstairs
    Posts
    10,054

    Default Re: Stops?

    Quote Originally Posted by SincereCorgi View Post
    ...developed by analogy with 'stopping' holes on woodwinds to produce different pitches, and then became 'double' when a second string was involved.
    It might have become "double" before the analogy

    Last edited by Bertram Henze; Sep-11-2012 at 5:19am.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  13. #12
    Registered User DougC's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Minneapolis, MN
    Posts
    1,875
    Blog Entries
    2

    Default Re: Stops?

    J.S. Bach repaired and built organs. I'd ask an early music specialist if they have seen the term in Bach's writing. Or get out the Grove Musical Dictionary or Oxford's. But I think asking some scholar who studies the origins of words and phrases is best. Anyway John McCory, I hope you ADD to Wickipedia. It is set up for just that purpose.

  14. #13
    Registered User SincereCorgi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Bay Area, California
    Posts
    2,128

    Default Re: Stops?

    Quote Originally Posted by DougC View Post
    J.S. Bach repaired and built organs.
    I don't think they call it a 'stop' in German, and Bach might have done a lot of his music thinking in Italian anyway.

  15. #14
    working musician Jim Bevan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Limache, Chile
    Posts
    809

    Default Re: Stops?

    Just as an interesting side-topic:

    I know a guitarist who referred to "power chords", chords made up of only roots and fifths, as "biads".

    I'm all for it becoming a commonly-used term.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •