How to Tune a Cello to the Key of A

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Russell Squires and I’m here today on behalf of ExpertVillage.com. I’m going to talk to you right now about tuning the cello to the A string. Many electronic tuners produce a synthetic A that you can tune your highest string the A to. Once you have your A in tuned, there are two different methods you can use to tune the rest of your strings to that one. The first one is to take your pointer finger, place it directly in front of the base of the neck, and then press firmly and produce a note. This note, is the same note as the open string directly above it, so when I press down on the second string, which is a D, I produce an A, which is the same string right above it. As you can tell, these are out of tune because it sounded a little flat. We need to sharpen the note to produce a clear A, we can do that all the way down the strings. The second method is to use harmonics. In this position, we barely touch the string at half way points, they produce harmonic sounds, an A harmonic produces the D three-quarters of the way up the string. A D, produces a D at that same half way point up the string we used in the first method of tuning. Put together, we can tune these two notes to each other and go all the way down the strings, and this is how we tune to the A. "