Very occasionally violinists may be asked to pluck their instruments holding them down in their laps. Stopped strings are harder, and the brilliant violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini wrote some virtuoso pieces with extremely difficult left hand pizzicato. It is not difficult to pluck an open string with the left hand. It is also possible to play pizzicato with the left hand (the hand which is normally doing the fingering). Cellists and double bass players can use the thumb for plucking, especially for playing chords. Sometimes more fingers can be used for particularly fast pizzicato sections. Sometimes the player may rest the thumb on the edge of the fingerboard to keep the hand steady. Bassists typically use the index and middle finger. When instruments of the violin family are played pizzicato the player usually plucks the string with the index finger (pointing finger) of the right hand somewhere over the fingerboard. When the player has to play with the bow again the word “arco” is written in the music (“arco” is the Italian word for “bow”). Instruments such as the violin, viola, cello and double bass are normally played with a bow, but if the composer wants the player to pluck instead of bow, the word “pizzicato” or just “pizz” is written in the music. Pizzicato means: playing a string instrument by plucking the strings (pulling a string with the finger and letting go quickly).

Pizzicato meaning