The Basics of Tuning a Fiddle

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm David Kaynor on behalf of expertvillage.com. You can learn more about me and what I do at www.davidkaynor.com my website. I'm going to talk about tuning the violin. I'm going to use the piano as my reference tone, and I'm going to take a 440-A, which is the A above the middle C. There is middle C; there is the 440-A, 440 hertz per second. I'm going to try to tune my A string exactly to that, and they are not in tune. My ear tells me I have to tune down. Experts say that you can actually detect the amount of dissonance between two notes that are out of tune. All that I can say the closer in tune there are, the better it sounds. I'm just try to make it sound as good as possible. So I tuned the A. I think I'm going to have to re-tune it later. Next I'm going to tune the D string, which on the violin is the third string, and I'm going to tune it both to the piano and my own A. That actually sounds pretty close, but I'm going to tune the 2 strings on my own instrument to get it. They sound pretty good. Experts can describe in scientific terms why an A string and a D string sound in tune when they are in tune. I'm not able to do that, but I know when I like the sound: at that point I consider it in tune. Next I got to tune my 4th string, my G, and this time I'm going to tune first to my own D string.

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