how to tune my violin...my violin teacher said that one is not considered as a violinist if he /she doesnt nknow how to tune their own violin...hmmm sometime, the sound of my strings (open string)which i compared to my piano just the same for me...but my teacher need to tune it over again, according to him...the notes is ''in the range of ''the right note..... really frustrated....til then, i've only did one tuning on t he open string correctly...

Don't forget, your Violin Teacher will have a much better and acuter sense of pitch than you and the rest of his/her pupils. When you hear a note that is almost in tune, your teacher may have perfect pitch or at least will know better when it is as spot on or as close as it can be...not just as a note itself, but the sound it produces when playing 5ths with the other strings.
If I was a violin teacher, personally, I would rather let a pupil tune their own violin and then make an excercise of seeing how close they could get by checking their tuning against a digital piano, pitch pipes or a tuning meter. Surely, that is part of a pupil's learning process too and is something that can't be expected to be achieved overnight?

Gae

Have you tried listening for the "beats". A note just out of tune will have beats of sound as the frequency don;t quite match up. Once exactly in tune then the beats disappear.

Incidently 5ths on a piano asre not exactly in tune anyway due to equal tempering (ie G# is not actually the same as Ab in real life!), so although yo may tune your violin to the piano of playing with piano accompaniment, you would not in an orcestra or for quartets etc.

You should again listen for the beats when tuning the fifths

Does that mean that after tuning one note according to the exam piano, the rest of the notes can be tuned by playing fifths and listening for the beats??

Sorry my previous post was largely incomprehensible due to typos, must have been tired. I've amended above.

What I meant to say was that you should tune to the piano when playing with the piano and listen for the beats on each note.

However if playing in a just tempered environment then you should tune your strings to each other by listening to the beats between the fifths.

All sounds very technical to me, but yeah...listen for those beats...

Took me ages to expplain to my mum what beats were. She still doesnt understand!!!!!

Yes, that's the way and seems to be the way followed by orchestral musicians: tune pairs of strings together.

I'm told to tune my A to the reference A (the piano, oboe or tuning fork).
Then draw the bow across the A and E strings together and adjust the E fine tuner (sorry to the purists) until the beat slows to nothing.
Then the A and D strings the same way. Then D and G. Then recheck the A (and go throug it again if necessary).

Does this sound right?
I had one problem: when the beat was very slow, was the string being tuned sharp or flat? But you learn to listen.


(Sometimes I cheat having a Korg chromatic tuner, to get the A, anyway, but I like to think I'm learning to tune properly)

hmm...beats...it still sound the same for me.....is it a matter of experience?

I guess the more experience you have the easier it is to hear them. Just listen very carefully to a note played on the piano (sustained) while you tune the violin up, see if you can hear the beats and then if you can hear the beats change frequency and then disappear altogether as you tune.

You can ask your teacher to demonstrate maybe?

I think the problem is knowing what the beats are supposed to sound like. The name beat, which couold imply something like a drum-beat sound just confuses the issue too. Think of a kind of constantly undulating wah-wah-wah wave sound and then you'll be able to hear it. If you hear these and they are not flowing as one wave, then the beats are out of alignment. Thats the best way I can think of explaining it in layman's terms.

Gae