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Tuning a violin:

First thing to look at when picking up any violin is the bridge.

Is it standing up straight, centered between the notches of the sound-holes? Bridges can move around; they are not glued on, but held in place by the tension in the strings. Often the bridge gets a tilt toward the fingerboard, and if it stands that way too long without being pulled back, it may warp. A slightly warped bridge can sometimes be straightened, but prevention is best. If you aren't sure how to push your bridge around, get someone to show you how it's done. With reasonable care, it will not be difficult.

G peg is closest to left thumb. Clockwise from the front, the pegs go G D A E.

A violin is tuned in fifths, G D A E, with the E being the thinnest, highest-voiced string. A fifth being a "perfect" interval, neighboring strings bowed together will make a clean-sounding chord, easy to hear as being in tune. A fifth shows up in the beginning of "Twinkle," or "My Favorite Things," or the "behaving" part of "Ain't Misbehaving." A descending fifth shows up in the "drunken" part of "What will we do with a drunken sailor?"

Most times all you need to do is touch up the tuning a bit, using the fine tuning screws on the tailpiece. Check the A with a tuning fork or electronic tuner, check the E with the A, check the D with the A, and check the G with the D. It really can be that easy.

You can use an electronic tuner on all four strings, or you can tune the A string to a fork or piano, and then tune the remaining strings to the A and to each other. (A tuning fork is reliable, cheap, compact, and never needs batteries.) It doesn't take long for your ears to learn to hear the "grind" of a pair of strings slightly out of tune with each other.

Fine tuners screwed all the way down can ram their levers into the top of the violin, leaving a mark, so it's a good idea to back them out occasionally, and bring the strings up to pitch using the pegs. It is easy to twist a peg so enthusiastically that the string breaks. This dramatic event has been known to make otherwise courageous people unwilling to touch a peg ever again. When it happens to you, I hope you will sigh, reach for a new string, and carry on. It's really not that big of a deal.

The secret to successful peg-turning is to listen to the string as it comes up to pitch.

You can tune with the instrument in your lap, plucking the string, then turning the peg as you brace the bottom of the pegbox with your other hand. If your pegs fit well, you can tune one-handed with the violin on your shoulder, while bowing the string. Either way, it makes sense first to relax the string a bit, lowering its pitch, then carefully tighten it up to true pitch. By loosening it first, you get the peg moving, and so get a sense of how tightly it fits in the pegbox. Because pegs are tapered, to get them to hold without slipping you may need to push in slightly as you turn, especially if they have popped loose.

Firmly and gently put the bridge where it belongs.

It only takes a nudge of the peg to make a difference in the pitch of the string, more so with steel strings than nylon. (These days all E strings are steel. You will probably notice how touchy the E is compared to the others.) By listening as you twist, you soon get a feel for how much peg movement will do the job. Remember to check the bridge and pull it back straight if need be.

Because wood swells and shrinks with changes in the weather, sometimes pegs get tight, and sometimes they pop loose. For this reason, it's a good idea to work the pegs every so often, even if the violin stays in tune so well that all it usually needs is a tweak of the fine tuners.

If you end up changing a string, only do one at a time, so things stay more or less in place while you do. While you have the opportunity, it doesn't hurt to use a touch of soft pencil lead in the groove of the nut and the notch of the bridge, to let the string slide easily as you tune, and as you "burp" the bridge into place, straight and centered.

The upright line falls 2/3 of the way to the back of the foot.

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Keys and Modes in Traditional Music

The first thing to do, when looking at a sheet of music, is look at the key signature. It is surprising how easy it is to get booby-trapped by skipping this simple but important step. Beyond simply avoiding wrong notes, it helps to know where the tune is rooted, to know what note it wants to come home to. Different tunes can use the same left-hand finger patterns to come home on different notes.

GNU free-licensed image thanks to Wikipedia

The regular rules for Major keys will be familiar to you all:

No sharps or flats make the key of C.
One flat makes the key of F.
In flat keys, the second-to-last flat is the key note.

For example, two flats, B and E, make the key of B-flat.

In sharp keys the last sharp is one note below the key note.

For example, two sharps, F and C, make the key of D.

Major, minor, or whatever, the order of sharps and flats in a key signature is always the same. (Some Klezmer, Hungarian, and other scales break this rule, but do we need to know that right now?)

Flats are put on in the order: B E A D G C F
Sharps are put on in the order: F C G D A E B

To remember the order of sharps, think "Fanny Can Go Down And Eat Biscuits." To remember the order of flats, think "Bad Elephants Are Darn Good Camp Flatteners." Or, you can just get familiar with the circle of fifths up there.

Not all our tunes are in the Major mode.

Many people with a musical background know about Major and minor modes. For example, no sharps or flats can mean the tune is in C Major, but it could also be in A minor. One flat can be F Major or D minor, one sharp can be G Major or E minor, and so on. But it doesn't end here...

Two flats can be:	Bb Major	F Mixolydian	C Dorian	G Minor
One flat can be:	F Major	C Mixolydian	G Dorian	D Minor
No sharps or flats can be:	C Major	G Mixolydian	D Dorian	A Minor
One sharp can be:	G Major	D Mixolydian	A Dorian	E Minor
Two sharps can be:	D Major	A Mixolydian	E Dorian	B Minor
Three sharps can be:	A Major	E Mixolydian	B Dorian	F# Minor

A lot of our tunes are in the Mixolydian mode, which sounds a lot like Major mode, but has a flat seventh, giving it a blues-like flavor. Other tunes are in the Dorian mode, which sounds minorish, with what I think of as a more earthy feel. It may not be as confusing as it looks. Things seem to change by fifths here; there's that circle thing starting up again... Anyway, you only play one tune at a time, not a whole table full.

(I usually think of Mixolydian as like Major, but with one less sharp or one extra flat. Dorian is the scale that starts on the second note of a Major scale with the same key signature. Another way to think of Dorian is like a minor scale starting on that minor scale's same first note, but with one more sharp or one less flat in the key signature.)

Never mind-- Leave this old Stuff for later, if you want. Juft play the Tunes, and let your Eares get ufed to them.

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abc Tune Format

Here's a tune one of Myra's admirers composed and dedicated to her.
If you copy the following text, and paste it into the window in
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
and click Submit there, you will get something like the image below it.

The written notes to the tune are just a start. Music is sound, not spots on paper.

That text=music format up there is called "abc" and you can find a lot of abc tunes at http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind well as at http://www.thesession.org/. Happy hunting!

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This week's tunes Scales & Arpeggios Frog Point plays out Bill's helpful handouts