How to Tune a Violin: Two Dimensions to Proper Pitch

 During your long apprenticeship as a violinist, you will receive instruction from a teacher, a tutor, and a master; and all three of your coaches constantly will remind you: You must tune your violin before each practice and each performance.  Yes, even if you tuned your violin this morning, you must tune it again before you play it this afternoon.  In a vigorous practice session or challenging performance, you may need to tune your violin between each piece.

If you don’t tune your violin each time you pick it up, it will sound more like a cigar box strung with copper wire than a genuine musical instrument, and the sounds of your practice sessions will violate standards of cruel and unusual punishment for your family and friends. 

You know your violin’s delicacy and sensitivity: You always keep it in its case when you are not playing it, and you understand that tiny changes in temperature and humidity will throw your instrument out of tune.  If you have practiced and played your violin for a while, you probably have discovered how the style of your fingering and bowing may throw your violin out of tune, too.  If you have done your best Beethoven-in-his-madness imitation on your strings, you may have stretched and beaten them out of harmony.  Your violin can stand-up to lots of hard play, but it always requires frequent and careful tuning.

As you learned the basics of how to tune your violin in your first lesson, you inevitably learned that you must tune your instrument to the proper notes and against itself.  In other words, working your way across the four strings from lowest, “G,” to highest, “E,” you must tune the strings to a tuner and to each other. 

In their genius, the violin’s inventors set the strings in perfect fifths.  Therefore, moving from left to right, the fourth position on each string sets the tone for the next string. You may have discovered, however, with a sense of mystery and a little frustration, tuning each string to its proper note with a pitch pipe may not guarantee the notes sound right with one another.  Even with a digital tuner, you still must tune the strings against both dimensions of correctness—against the notes and against each other.

Wonderfully high-teach and amazingly accurate, delicate and sensitive as a dachshund’s ears, a digital tuner once was the property of the privileged professional elite.  Like just about everything else in the universe, though, the internet has made the digital tuner accessible to the average apprentice violinist.  You may download a digital tuner to your computer, or you simply may use the digital tuner available on several safe and secure websites.  The screen shows your tone as a line on an oscilloscope.  When you twang grossly out of tune, the line dances all across the screen, completely haywire; as you get closer and closer to the right pitch, the line smoothes.  And, as you delicately work your fine-tuning pegs to perfect precision, the line will snap straight when you hit exactly the note.  Run your bow across the string gently and make sure your violin sustains the right tone.  Then, move to the next string. 

Tune your violin first to the digital tuner, then to itself.  Of course, if you’re playing in the orchestra or with an ensemble, you will tune your instrument to your fellow players’, too.  And, just as your instructors always have insisted, you will tune your instrument just as often as your own delicate ear tells you it needs tuning.  You don’t really need your coaches to remind you the music and your own self-esteem require nothing less than perfect pitch.