The keys the violin loves · From Zero to Mozart

Some keys make the violin ring. Some make it sound dull and boxed-in. It isn't random, and it's the reason this whole course has lived in G, D and A.

The open strings do the work

Your four open strings are G, D, A, E. When you play a stopped note that matches one of them — or a strong overtone of one — that open string vibrates along with it, and the note blooms and keeps sounding. This is sympathetic resonance.

So a key gets extra ring whenever its important notes line up with the open strings. D major is the most resonant key on the violin, because all four open strings are useful degrees:

56 bpm

The four open strings, read in D major: subdominant, tonic, dominant, supertonic. Every one is a note the key leans on. That's why D major glows.

G, D, A and E major all ring (and so do G, D, A and E minor — the open strings don't change). Flat keys — D♭, A♭, G♭ — sound muted by comparison: their tonics and dominants have no open string to reinforce them, and the resonance shifts onto weaker degrees.

Hear it

60 bpm

Play D on the A string (3rd finger), dead in tune, and hold it. Listen — the open D string below hums along on its own. Then play the open A. The whole instrument is resonating.

72 bpm

A D major arpeggio — open D, open A, and F♯ in tune. It rings. Now imagine the same shape in D♭ major (every note a half step lower, no open strings): it would sound flat and shut-in by comparison. Same notes-relative-to-each-other, a completely different bloom.

Try it

Try

On the A string, play D (3rd finger) and move it by tiny amounts until the open D string underneath rings loudest — that's the note perfectly in tune. Now do the same for A on the D string (4th finger) against the open A. The instrument is telling you when you've found the note.

Keys used to have personalities

Here's an old idea worth knowing. Before equal temperament flattened every key to the same colour (see In tune is not one thing), keys had characters. In 1806, C. F. D. Schubart wrote a whole table: D major was "the key of triumph, of hallelujahs, of victory- rejoicing"; C minor was "the lament of unhappy love"; E♭ major "the key of love, of devotion." Charpentier and Mattheson wrote similar lists a century earlier.

Some of that was pure convention, but some was real: on the unevenly-tuned instruments of the day, D major genuinely did sound brighter than D♭. On the violin, a version of it survives — D major really is more radiant than D♭, because of the open strings. "The symbol tells you what; the era tells you how" applies to keys too.

The usual mistake

Fighting a flat key instead of a sharp one when you have a choice — or, in a sharp key, forgetting to use the open strings the key hands you. If a passage in D or A can take an open string, let it: it locks your intonation and it rings.