Are Tuning Forks The Best for Tuning Your Violin, Viola, Cello, or Bass?
Getting your strings in tune with a tuning fork
Well suited to tuning musical instruments, tuning forks also have been used to create gyroscopes, check people’s hearing, and calibrate radar guns. A string player uses one by striking it on her knee (or another not-too-hard object) and then touching the base to the bridge of the instrument. The violin amplifies that resulting sound.
Using a hand-generated pitch to tune your instrument has an important advantage over using an electronic tuner, according to Norman Pickering, whose inventions include the phonograph cartridge. “There is reason to believe that if you substitute visual tuning for aural tuning, you may lose some acuity,” he says.
This article, "Are Tuning Forks The Best for Tuning Your Violin, Viola, Cello, or Bass?," is part of the Strings Archive, which you can access with a paid site subscription.
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