Why It's Important to Tune a Violin When Playing Fiddle Music

Video Transcript

Hi I'm David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. In this video series I'm discussing tuning the violin. And one logical place to start is with the question why? It is a good question. Here we have a violin which might be in tune and it might not, and if I simply start playing on it, we could conclude that it would be very difficult for me to play enjoyable music to a westerner's ear on this instrument. Now I actually can play a tune. However, I can't play it in a standard approach to the violin. So I have to do something. And the first thing that a fiddler has to be able to do is get the fiddle to sound pleasant.. simply relative to itself. And so without even drawing on a reference tone, as from a piano, or a tuning fork or a electronic tuner, I can simply take a string on my fiddle...in this case an A, and think “well, does that sound like it could be a tone to work from?” The answer is maybe. So I'm now going to tune this string relative to i,t and that sounds like a pleasing interval. And that sounds like a pleasing interval. That does not. So I have tuned my G string up a little bit to make a interval sound that sounds good to me with the D string. I have tuned the D and the A to sound pleasant. I have tuned the A and the E to sound pleasant. And what I get now...

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