That’s right, the sound produced will be of a higher pitch. What do you think will happen when you do this? It would make for a very boring instrument, however.Īlso, why would you copy the same string four times? You will only ever be able to produce the same notes on each of the strings.Īh, but what happens if you add four rubber bands of varying thickness to the violin instead? Now you have an instrument that when the strings are plucked in ‘open position’ (which simply means plucking the string without placing your finger on the fingerboard) then the rubber band will produce a different sound, dependant on its thickness.īuilding on this analogy you could place your finger on top of one of the rubber bands at some point along the fingerboard which will effectively shorten the length of the band. If you placed four rubber bands of exactly the same thickness, then each one should produce the same tone when plucked. Okay great, so now consider that you had four rubber bands instead of strings on your violin running from the head to the base. Which one will make the more high pitched sound? Think of it like pinging a long rubber band versus a very thin short rubber band.

And the fatter the string the lower the sound it produces naturally.

b) The longer and thicker the string, the heavier it is and the lower frequency sound it produces.Īgain the shorter the string, the faster the vibration of the string and therefore the higher frequency sound it produces.

a) The shorter and thinner the string the faster the vibration and consequently the higher the pitch.

In order for a violin string to produce sound, it must vibrate. It’s a great question and once you understand the principle it is actually relatively straightforward. However, if you do understand this concept early on, as I will explain here, then you can actually become more creative in your approach to the instrument and you may even be able to switch to different stringed instruments more easily as a result. It could also be argued that it is not actually necessary to understand why a violin is tuned in this way and it is enough to know where to place your fingers to produce the relevant notes. They will consequently move over it pretty quickly and you may find that they simply expect the student to take it at face value that the violin is tuned this way because that’s the way it has always been. I often get the feeling that many teachers aren’t really confident in their own understanding of the physics and believe that by addressing this question head on their lack of knowledge in this area could be exposed. It is something which many teachers do not take the necessary time to explain. This means that a violin is tuned in degrees of perfect fifths. The other four notes move upwards in steps of 5 notes from there. The lowest string (thickest gauge) is the G, which corresponds to the G below middle C on the piano keyboard.

What are the four strings on a violin? The four strings on a violin are G, D, A, and E.

However, it is not immediately obvious to a beginner and if not understood correctly from the start it can really slow down progress. ‘What Are The Four Strings On A Violin? It is not uncommon however for teachers to skip over this question, with the assumption that the principle is so basic there’s no need to dwell too long on it. It’s one of the most crucial, first pieces of information, that every violin student should learn.

4 stringed instruments