It takes quite some practice to become handy in tuning your violin and viola. Make sure to push the pegs inside the peg box while you are turning them. When you just turn, they will come out of the peg box. Remember that the violin or viola doesn’t have guitar mechanic. Otherwise you can tune too high and your string can snap. When you are tuning, please always check where you are by watching the tuner constantly. This means the string is tuned too low, not too high. For example: when the G string is very low, it becomes a high F sharp. When you use the chromatic mode, your tuner can indicate a tone that doesn’t match your string. Some tuners have a special violin mode that only recognizes the violin strings. When you pluck a string, the tuner shows you which tone it is and whether it’s in tune, too low or too high. How does a tuner work? When you talk, the tuner reacts on the sound of your voice. When you want to learn to tune with a tuning fork, watch this video: How (and WHY?) to Tune Your Violin with a Tuning Fork? As it’s important to tune your violin or viola every time you play, I recommend using a tuner. However, for beginners, this might be very difficult.

I know some mnemonics for this in Dutch, but please enlighten me in the comments about the English mnemonic!Įventually it’s best and most accurate to tune with a tuning fork. The viola is tuned C G D A for high to low. The violin is tuned G D A E from low to high.

It’s handy to have four fine tuners on your violin.

When you are just beginning to learn to tune, I recommend using just the fine tuners. For tuning larger differences you can use the tuning pegs. For tuning small differences you can use the fine tuners.

Electronic tuner violin