How To Tune Mandolin

Hello, my name is Matthew Forbes for The Music Workshop Company. I am going to take you through how to tune some instruments, how to play them basically, and also how to read the notated music for them. Here is how to tune a mandolin in the regular tuning.

The mandolin is tuned exactly the same pitch as the violin, the only difference being that each pitch, each string, is actually doubled with two strings each. The purpose of them is actually to give a particular quality to the sound, and I will get onto that as we go along. As with the violin, I tend to start with the A, just because that is the easiest shared note among the other players that are in the band, or on the piano, or it is the easiest reference point to have.

It is the A above middle C. Now, you have to be very careful with your plectrum here because you only want to tune one string at a time. So I tune the lower of the two, that is the one nearest me.

I turn my machine heads clockwise to go up, and anti-clockwise to come down. As you can probably tell from my singing, it is much easier to tune anything when you have the sound in your head if you match your voice with the sound. Now, the best thing to do is to tune the other string, the higher one in comparison with the lower.

So the, on the mandolin, the lowest string of each pair is the machine head furthest away of the two, so I have got four on this side for the top two stings, and for on this side for the lower. Then, I am happy with the lower of the two A's, but the higher needs a bit of tweaking, it is a bit flat. I want to keep them very very slightly out with each other, if they are exactly the same, the doubling of the string does not really have a great effect, but if you keep them very slightly apart, has that lovely sort of chorus reverberation effect.

Now, to go lower, they are tuned in fifths, so A goes down to D, A - G - F - E - D, if you are counting the musical alphabet. The easiest way to think of a fifth, is to use the tonic solfege scale, so the lowest string is "do" and the highest string is "so", so if we do it backwards, if you are happy with that one, it is so fa mi re do. Do, that is the note I am looking for if I have it in my head.

This sounds a little bit low to me. Again, I am being very careful to pluck one string of the two at a time. It should also sound like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Twinkle twinkle, that is how to tune a perfect fifth. The other string, again I just have to, if I hear all four now, it is tuned but it still has that sort of chorus-y type vibration to the sound. I will go down one from the D, so I am now happy with the D.

So, do ra, twinkle twinkle, I am looking for the lower. Pick one of them. I will match it with the other, and I have only got the top ones to do now, so that is twinkle twinkle.

I might not be able to sing it very well, but at least I have got it in my head. That is a little low, and now the mandolin is in tune. .