When To Change Your Strings – A Guide

Did you know that your violin strings can affect your artistry on the instrument?

Yes, violin strings are an integral part of a violin’s sound.

Changing one’s strings can rapidly improve your artistry, and help with your technique, especially if you are stuck on issues to do with tone, responsiveness, and even left hand technique.

How Often to Change Strings

Often, one is stuck on technique and artistry simply because the strings are too old.

Strings need to be replaced, at least once a year.

Strings especially need to be replaced as old strings do not allow for violin intonation or pitch to stay consistently.

Technically or musically, you can be out of tune simply because your strings are old.

When Should You Change Your Strings

The question of how often one should change one’s violin strings depends entirely on the use, degree of wear, and responsiveness and/or sound and ability to retain a pitch correctly with the instrument and on the existing strings attached. 

A Visual Cue

One useful way of ascertaining if your strings need to be changed immediately is visual – if the string looks abraded, worn, or has some of the steel winding coming off it, the string should be changed. If the string looks discolored or tarnished, it should look also like it should be changed. Wear on a string can be and is visible, and in both instances the string change should be immediate.

An Aural Cue – For Serious and Professional Violinists 

If you are a serious musician or professional violinist, the degree and volume of use and wear on your strings is greater, compared to the student or amateur musician. As a consequence, serious and/or professional violinists may need to change their strings before any damage is visual, as the wear of the string and the commensurate acoustic effects may not keep pace with the visual or visible damage of the string. Here, an acoustic cue is the right one. You may find your strings are dull and lacking in responsivenes, even if there ins’t any visible or tangible material damage or wear. You may also find that the strings are harder to stay in tune, are difficult to play on, or feel a difference in degree of playability and responsiveness of the strings now compared to before the latest change, or when the change was settling in the most successfully.

In all these instances, a change of strings is also in order. Some violinists find themselves changing their strings every two weeks, even, given string adaptability to change and use. Some strings, for example, settle in almost immediately; some may take up to a week to sound ‘normal’ and be responsive.

In the days after a change, the violin can sound flat, dull, out of tune, or the strings may keep slipping out of tune. These are all transient and the string will settle in.

Nevertheless, the time for which this settling in takes or needs to take to happen can and will also determine how frequently one can – or should – change one’s strings – and these are all pertinent considerations when weighing the cause.

A Critical Cue – For All Violinists 

One other critical sign pertinent to all violinists is that you need to change your strings – regardless of how tarnished they are or how ‘responsive’ they might or might not be – when they cannot stay in tune. This is a critical sign that signals a string change is in absolute order. If the strings or the pitch of music on the instrument does not remain in tune, or moves rapidly out of tune, after playing, your strings need to be changed.

Further Information

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By Orion Music and Arts, Cambridge, MA

Orion Music and Arts, Cambridge, MA, 2023-2024, Copyright, ©, Orion Music and Arts

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