Violin

*puts violin on bed, takes off safety glasses*

*dances around like a loon, giving voice to assorted whoops and similar*

It's amazing what you can do if you just barge in and give it a shot...

For those who don't know, I bought a violin a month or two ago. All well and good (and a fantastic deal), but I carelessly broke the G string when I was tuning the instrument for the first time. Note: When increasing the tension on a string, it's a good idea to do so slowly. Really. Otherwise the tension of the string between the nut and the peg may temporarily be a lot higher than you realise. This can cause the string to snap between nut and peg, which is precisely what happened to my poor G string.

Eljen brought down a replacement string when she visited shortly thereafter, but we discovered that the bridge had shifted. This is a bad thing, and more or less intimidated both of us into setting the violin aside (plus we weren't exactly sitting around bored to begin with).

I'd been planning to get it fixed by a professional, and I'm about to have enough money. Since I'm home today, I decided to give Allan's Music a call and find out how much it was likely to cost me. I got my violin out in case they wanted me to check something on it (I have no clue, really). When I got it out, it suddenly occurred to me to have a shot myself at the restringing - after all, what damage would I be likely to cause which would increase the repair bill? I had a shot, and here's what happened...

Details:
1. I poked the string through the peg and then wound it, catching the ball in the slot on the appropriate fine-tuner when I'd taken in enough slack (my violin has fine-tuners on all four strings).
2. The G string had some tension but not much, and I used the pegs to loosen the other strings to match. The strings did sound definite pitches when plucked and weren't slack, but they were pretty relaxed.
3. With the strings loosened, the bridge was pretty free to slide (and even tilt <.<). Using a ruler and the f-holes, I placed the bridge as near to centre as I could. 4. I tightened the strings little by little, making sure to keep the tension more or less balanced at all times. I stopped when all strings were within about a quarter-tone of their intended pitches, mostly a fraction sharp (since their pitch is dropping slowly right now). Incidentally, I used my mobile phone as my pitch reference. Nokia 3215, with the solid-gold "Composer" tool which gives me any reference pitch, anywhere, anytime. Right now I've not even touched the bow, and I'm not planning to do so yet. I'll come back to the instrument later (today?) and tune it accurately, and then I'll play it. And there will be much rejoicing, assuming I haven't unknowingly buggered something up. We shall see.

*dances some more, signs off*

EDIT: Violin is now tuned and playable. On a side note, I've decided I prefer playing without a shoulder rest. Now to learn how to actually play the thing...