String instrument strings, or play them by rolling the bell of a brass instrument such as a trombone on the array of strings. However, these are relatively rarely used special techniques. Other keyed string instruments, small enough for a strolling musician to play, include the plucked autoharp, the bowed nyckelharpa, and the hurdy-gurdy, which is played by cranking a rosined wheel. Steel-stringed instruments (such as the guitar, bass, violin, etc.) can be played using a magnetic field. An E-Bow is a small hand-held battery-powered device that magnetically excites the strings of an electric string instrument to provide a sustained, singing tone reminiscent
Hurdy-gurdy originated from fiddles in either Europe or the Middle East (e.g., the rebab instrument) some time before the eleventh century A.D. The first recorded reference to fiddles in Europe was in the 9th century by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911) describing the lira ("lūrā") as a typical instrument within the Byzantine Empire. One of the earliest forms of the hurdy-gurdy was the organistrum, a large instrument with a guitar-shaped body and a long neck in which the keys were set (covering one diatonic octave). The organistrum had a single melody string and two drone strings, which ran over