IT sul tasto bow contact point core term Support my free tools
- Abbreviation
- s.t.
How is sul tasto played?
Move the bow from its normal contact point to the strings above the end of the fingerboard. Reduced string resistance and less pronounced upper overtones generally make the sound quieter, darker, weaker, covered or nebulous. The exact colour varies with instrument, register, speed and dynamic. Sul tasto overlaps flautando, but it more directly names the contact point, whereas flautando may instead foreground a flute-like colour or low pressure. Continue through the marked passage until ord., another bow-position label or the end of the shown bracket or transition.
How does sul tasto sound?
Softer, more diffuse, darker or flute-like string sound.
In context
The Cambridge Guide to Orchestration defines sul tasto as bowing above the fingerboard and describes the resulting quiet, dark, covered tone. Lizzy Welsh recommends s.t. and m.s.t. as passage labels, and George Lewis’s Edition Peters score Hexis independently expands s.t. in its legend. The abbreviation is therefore stable in specialist score practice, while the full words remain the clearest self-explanatory form.
Equivalent terms
- FR sur la touche
- DE am Griffbrett
- EN over the fingerboard
- DA over gribebrættet