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With the wood — striking or bouncing the wooden stick of the bow on the strings.
Col legno produces a dry, hollow, percussive sound. Use it for eerie, skeletal effects — danse macabre passages, ghostly textures, or rhythmic patterns that need a completely different color from normal bowing. Players may resist using their best bows for this technique.
Saint-Saëns's "Danse macabre" — col legno strings evoke the rattling of skeletons' bones.
Col legno is one of 228 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary, where every definition is written around how composers actually use the word.
Browse the full dictionary →