Violins are stringed instruments that are typically played with a bow. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world and it has been around for centuries. Violin has four strings and has a different sound depending on which strings are plucked or bowed at any given time. The strings are tuned in perfect fifths - they are tuned in E - A - D - G. Many famous and influential composers having written pieces especially for it.
The one who performs a violin is called violinist. Violins are essential part of an orchestra. Typically they divided in first and second violins and there could be about 30 of them. The sheets for violing use the treble clef.
Range
Its sounding is the highest within the bowed strings family. It could have a range from G3 to E7 notes.
Today we could hear to violin in multiple genres beside the classical or orchestral music - pop, rock, ballad tracks to name a few.
It also very common to play a violin instrument with a synthesizer - most of the times we use prerecorded samples. Within a sample player like Native Instruments Kontakt we could combine a big number of violin samples for performance. Using different articulations is very important as it gives the ability to explore all dimensions of a violin within our DAW. Although it is common that we need to master midi functionalities (not using a 100% quantize setting, different velocities on notes etc) and the different settings within our sample player (tuning differences, different attack or release times, round robin etc.) in order to finish with a natural sonic result.
We could also create some synthetic violin patches without using samples - this is most common with creating synth sounding string ensembles. Crafting a synthetic violin of course is not realistic in sonic terms. We can easily tell the difference but in the end we could create music with every sound possible - many times in music history string alike synthetic sounds have been used in commercial tracks.
Vicious Antelope has released some string - violin alike synth patches that are not based in violin samples.