How to tune a violin

Tuning is where beginner violinists do most of their accidental damage, and the reason is that a violin has two entirely separate tuning mechanisms with different jobs. Using the wrong one is not a mistake of degree — it is how strings snap and bridges fall over.

The two systems

Pegs sit in the scroll and make large changes. They are friction fittings — there is no gearing on a standard violin peg, so it holds purely by being wedged into a tapered hole. That makes them powerful and imprecise, and it is why they slip.

Fine tuners are small screws at the tailpiece that make tiny adjustments to string length. They are precise, they cannot slip, and they are what a beginner should be using nearly all the time.

A student outfit like the Stentor Student II Violin Outfit#ad is normally supplied with fine tuners fitted, and if it has four of them, one per string, treat that as a feature rather than a compromise. Some instruments only carry a fine tuner on the E string, which is the one most likely to snap; on those, the other three do need peg work and the technique below matters more.

Which notes, and in which order

From thickest to thinnest, a violin is tuned G, D, A, E.

Tune A first. That is the convention, it is what an orchestra tunes to, and it gives you a fixed reference for everything else. Then D, then G, then E.

There is a practical reason for that order beyond tradition. All four strings pull on the bridge together, so changing one alters the tension on the others. Working outward from A and then going round again is how you converge rather than chase.

Expect to do two full passes. After the first, the earlier strings will have drifted slightly. That is normal and it is not a fault.

Using a tuner

A beginner should tune with a device rather than by ear, and should keep doing so for a long time. Playing on an out-of-tune instrument actively trains the ear toward wrong intervals, and on a fretless instrument, where every note is placed by feel and listening, that is a genuinely expensive habit to acquire.

The Snark clip-on chromatic tuner#ad clips to the scroll or the body and reads vibration through the wood rather than through a microphone, which means it works in a room with a television on or in a group lesson where four other people are also tuning. That is the main reason to prefer a clip-on over a phone app.

Bow the string steadily and evenly while reading the display. Short scratchy strokes give the tuner an unstable pitch to read, and the resulting jumping display is why some beginners conclude their tuner is broken.

The fine tuner method

Bow the string, read the tuner, and turn the fine tuner screw clockwise to raise the pitch or anticlockwise to lower it. Small movements — a quarter turn does more than you expect.

If a fine tuner reaches the end of its travel and the string is still flat, do not force it. Screwed all the way down, the tuner can contact the top of the violin and damage the varnish. Instead, wind the fine tuner most of the way back out and make up the difference at the peg.

The peg method, carefully

Pegs hold by friction, so the technique is push and turn at the same time.

Hold the violin securely — on your lap, scroll away from you, is easiest for a beginner. Grip the peg and turn it while pressing inward toward the pegbox. The inward pressure is not optional; it is what wedges the peg so it holds when you let go.

Turn in very small increments and bow between each one. A peg has no gearing, so a small rotation is a large pitch change, and it is easy to go from flat to snapped in one movement.

Always approach the note from below. If you overshoot sharp, come back down well below the note and come up again. A string tuned downward to pitch will drift flat, because the slack has not been taken up evenly along its length.

Watch the bridge. As you tune upward the strings pull the top of the bridge toward the fingerboard, and over several tunings it leans. A leaning bridge eventually warps or falls, and a fallen bridge can drop the soundpost inside the instrument — which is a trip to a luthier rather than a home repair. Check every so often that the back face of the bridge is at right angles to the top, and ease it upright with the string tension slackened slightly.

When pegs will not hold

Slipping. Almost always insufficient inward pressure while turning. Dry air makes it worse, because the peg and the pegbox both shrink. Peg compound — a waxy stick applied to the bearing surfaces — is the standard fix and it is inexpensive.

Sticking, or turning in jumps. Usually too much friction, sometimes a humid spell. The same compound helps, and a peg that is genuinely seized should go to a luthier rather than be forced.

Everything slipping in winter. That is a humidity problem rather than a peg problem, and it is a warning about the instrument as a whole — see how to care for a violin.

The two disasters to avoid

Snapping the E string. The thinnest string under the highest tension, and the one that goes when someone turns a peg too far too fast. Bow between every small adjustment and it will not happen. Keep a spare E in the case regardless.

Dropping the bridge. If all four strings are slackened at once the bridge is held by nothing and falls, and the soundpost inside — which is also held only by tension — can drop with it. Never take all the strings off together. Change strings one at a time.

How long tuning should take

For an experienced player with fine tuners, under a minute. For a beginner in the first few months, five minutes is normal and not a sign of anything wrong.

What is worth knowing is that a violin that will not hold a tuning at all, on settled strings with correctly functioning pegs, usually has a mechanical cause rather than a technique one — and on very cheap instruments the cause is frequently the fittings themselves. That is exactly the line we draw in best beginner violins, and what should be in the box is set out in what comes with a violin outfit.