How to tune a violin

Violin strings are G D A E, tuned in fifths, starting from A4 at 440 Hz. How to use the fine tuners rather than the pegs, and why bowing beats plucking when you are checking pitch.

July 29, 2026

A violin is tuned G D A E, in perfect fifths, from the thickest string to the thinnest.

The A string is the reference. It sits at exactly 440 Hz in concert pitch, which is why an orchestra tunes to the oboe’s A and why every tuning fork you have ever seen is an A.

Pegs or fine tuners

Use the fine tuners at the tailpiece for anything small, which is nearly always. A quarter turn there moves the pitch a few cents and the change is stable.

Go to the pegs only when a string is badly out, or when the fine tuner has run out of travel. Pegs are a friction fit, and the technique is to push in toward the scroll while you turn. Turning without pushing lets the peg slip back the moment you let go, which is the cause of most “I tuned it and it immediately went out” complaints.

Turn the peg in small increments and approach the note from below. Coming down onto a note with a peg almost never holds.

Bow it, do not pluck it

If you are checking pitch with a tuner, draw the bow rather than plucking. A bowed note is sustained and steady, which gives a pitch detector a clean signal for as long as you need. A plucked note starts loud, changes character within a quarter of a second, and then fades, so the reading moves while you are looking at it.

Use a steady, moderate bow speed. Pressing hard enough to make the string crunch introduces noise across the whole spectrum, and a tuner has to sort the actual pitch out of that.

Tuning in fifths, and why it is not quite that simple

Once your A is right you can tune the other strings by playing two adjacent strings together and listening for the beating between them. When two strings are a true fifth apart, the beating stops.

Here is the wrinkle: if you tune every string as a pure fifth, you will end up with a G that is noticeably flatter than the G on a piano. Pure fifths and equal temperament are not the same thing, and the gap accumulates across three of them. String players generally live with this and adjust by ear when playing with fixed-pitch instruments. If you are playing with a piano, tune each string to the tuner rather than to the string beside it. The temperament guide explains why the two disagree.

Viola and cello

Both are tuned C G D A, in fifths, and both are covered in the viola and cello guide. The pattern is the same as the violin, shifted down a fifth.