A large approximate degeneracy appears in the light meson spectrum measured at the CERN low energy antiproton ring, suggesting a novel principal quantum number n þ j in QCD spectra. We recently showed that the large degeneracy could not be understood with state-of-the-art confining and chiral invariant quark models, derived in a truncated Coulomb gauge. To search for a solution to this problem, here we add the gluon or string degrees of freedom. Although independently the quarks or the gluons would lead to a 2n þ j or 2n þ l spectrum, adding them together may lead to the desired n þ j pattern.To understand the large degeneracy of the light meson spectrum [1-5] observed by the Crystal Barrel Collaboration at the CERN low energy antiproton ring (LEAR), we include by the same token both bosonic and fermionic excitations. This is relevant for the observation of excited mesons in the new generation of experiments, say PANDA at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, and in lattice QCD. We first describe the degeneracy, where the meson mass squared M 2 in the excited meson spectrum is led by the principal quantum number n þ j. Then we review the status of gluon string excitations with an M 2 possibly of the order of 2ð2n þ lÞ. Recently we have shown [5] that the quark degrees of freedom are not sufficient to understand the excited light meson spectrum, finding that the chiral invariant and confining quark model has an M 2 of the order of 2ð2n þ jÞ, with a prefactor which is correct for the angular l or j quantum numbers, but too large for the radial quantum number n. Importantly, both gluon and quark excitations have the same scale, with the string tension . Here we show that arriving at the desired n þ j pattern is possible if we include the gluon or string degrees of freedom in relativistic quark models with chiral symmetry breaking. For simplicity, in this first comprehensive study of a gluonic and chiral invariant high spectrum, we use einbeins to add the bosonic excitations to the fermionic excitations.