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On the E string.
Printed above the violin staff as sul E (commoner than sul mi), or as the Roman numeral I, with a bracket or dashed line showing how long to stay on the string. It ends with the bracket or another string indication.
Abbreviations: sul E
The violin’s E string is its most brilliant, and staying on it keeps a passage bright and cutting. It is specified less often than sul G, because high passages lie there anyway; the instruction matters mainly for lower notes that would naturally be taken on the A string, or for harmonics. On the double bass the E string is the lowest, so be clear which instrument you mean.
Sul mi is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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