5 ways to improve your tuning

Here I want to share with you 5 ways to improve your tuning on the violin or viola.

Tuning is a skill that requires lots of practice! (as anything on the violin or viola, right?) But knowing how to practice it, or knowing different ways of practicing it is what will make a difference.

Below I show 5 practice hacks that will improve your tuning right away

Open strings are our best friends when it comes to tuning (considering you have your instrument in tune already haha). Once we tune our instruments, they are locked into an interval relationship. We can do it in two ways:

• Same note as the open string
  • Unisson
  • Octaves

• Different notes, comparing an interval

Every time you play the same note as an open string (in tune) a resonance happens.

Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration that matches its resonant frequency, defined as the frequency that generates the maximum amplitude response in the system. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance

I like calling it “bringing tones,” it tells us if that note is in tune every time you play perfectly in tune.

Below is an excerpt of the Suzuki Volume 2 book,

you can find this book here:

https://www.alfred.com/suzuki-violin-school-volume-2/p/00-0146S

By playing a scale, you can gather more information about what you are playing, by listening for the relationship between all notes in the sequence you are playing. Every note inside a scale has a particular function, some notes bring more tension and movement, others tend to be more stable. Some strategies you can use to tune a scale are:

• Dividing into two tetrachords

tetrachord, musical scale of four notes, bounded by the interval of a perfect fourth (an interval the size of two and one-half steps, e.g., c–f). source: https://www.britannica.com/art/tetrachord

• Repeating or resting on the root note

• Listening for the 7th note as a tension to resolution

More about scale practice, you can find here in this beginner scale practice

Our ears get used to a certain relationship between notes or can’t hear some harmonics, depending on the register you are playing. You can practice this by:

• Playing the same note on different octaves (similar to the above 1st section, but not with open strings)

• Playing the same note with different fingers

• Playing the same melody on different octaves or different keys

• Playing the same melody with different fingers

Playing double stops gives us another layer of reference for our tuning system, because of two reasons.

1. You can listen right away for the relationship between notes, looking for the “right sound” of that interval.
2. Puts our left hand into a position that is not the same as playing a simple melody.

You can use either open strings or stopped fingers while practicing that, whichever feels best for you.

Here is a little video I made showing some of these tips above

So that’s it! Let me know if there’s anything else I might have forgotten!