Stretching the New Violin Strings

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. I'm talking about changing strings on a violin. Now am I done? Am I done with that string? Not by a long shot. This string is now going to stretch for the next 24 hours, and the violin will be continuously out of tune. I can gently speed up that stretching process by carefully stretching the string; and I have done this too vigorously and broken a couple of strings in my time. They're are actually quite vulnerable to side stresses, so I do this very gently. But now that has stretched it almost a half tone's worth, so I will bring it back up to pitch, which sounds promising, and now I'll do it again. I can almost a guarantee that you will hear a difference. Once again that is slightly flat, and this could go on and on much longer than this instructional segment ought to. But suffice it to say that stretching strings are an inevitability. It's arguable that it's worse with Perlon and gut strings than with wire core strings, which reach tension and tend to stay there. But with a little bit more work and that will be a relatively more stable string. That concludes the G string segment of changing strings."