Bridge Update (late)

My bridge arrived Monday (2/07) and it was a bit of a breeze setting it up, until I realized that I was unsure how much tension to apply to the strings... I didn't know what it felt like.

Somewhere in the process I decided that tuning was a fruitless effort because I probably didn't have the strings tense enough to begin with - not tuned, but just near the correct amount of tension. Fortunately one of my local music stores "tuned" and adjusted the strings for me (2 of the strings were coiled backwards).

The first person at the music store did restring G and E, but she attempted to tune all four strings against a piano... and seemed to not pay attention at times. The second person (whom I did not watch or hear) also attempted to tune the instrument, but I assumed it'd probably still be out of tune. So mechanically, the music store associates did set the violin up, but I was left to tune it at home. Here's the corrected coiling direction:

Afterwards, I tuned with an electronic tuner and it wasn't so bad - it took about 30 minutes or so the first time (well actually the second time, lol). Today is Saturday (2/12) and it takes less than 5 minutes to make sure the strings are tuned.

This week's lessons:

1) When getting someone to help you, it's always great to have a little background knowledge in the subject.

2) Bowing the strings while tuning gives better results than plucking the strings.

3) Tuning in 5ths [and checking with an electronic tuner] is much more accurate. (<-- my choice as of yesterday)

I will post a video with my first bow strokes soon...