How to Tune a Violin With New Strings

Video Transcript

" Hi I'm David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. I have in my hand a recently restrung violin, and when I put on these individual strings, I tune them all up to pitch. However, here's what has happened in the last 5 minutes. It stretched, and that stretching process is sure to continue. There is little that can be done about it, except to try to tolerate it cheerfully and keep on making adjustments. Now many fiddlers like to tune their A string first, and I'm going to take my pitch from my German violin here, which is, which is at concert pitch, 440 A. And I've played music long enough that the discrepancy is pretty apparent to me. This is a listening skill which I've believe can be taught; I don't believe that you are born with it. I believe that it is a matter of a lot of practice and a lot of exposure. What I'm doing is getting these strings approximately in tune. Not exact, but approximate. I'm going to check my bridge see to if it is pulled forward, and it looks alright. Maybe not perfect, but it is pretty darn close. So I'm going to go through this again. It has already stretched, but not to much. I'm going to do one more tuning up here at the peg. Now D. That is stretched. G... that actually sounds pretty good... and the E... sounds pretty tolerable, so. Now I will do some tuning with my bow. Let me try to tune my strings to the A. That sounds reasonably good."