Improve Your Violin Sound With Strings

There are a huge variety of string brands, and types available to us – but there certainly is no exact science for picking which string will help your instrument sound the best. Our belief is that players should more, or less, stick to one brand of string for as long as possible. This will affect the way that your left- and right-hand techniques respond to the instrument you play, and therefore, changing strings can sometimes impact your technique. With that in mind, once you have picked a string brand which you like the sound and feeling of, we then need to get the most out of them! Our strings are very much like the ‘voice’ of our instrument, and just like all other parts of the instrument, anything that touches or interacts with the strings will alter the sound that is produced.

TL; DR, you absolutely must wipe down your strings thoroughly after you finish playing for more than 15 minutes. Leftover sweat, skin oils, or rosin all build up over time and limit the freedom with which your strings can vibrate – making the sound diminish much sooner than they are designed to last. Don’t forget to wipe underneath the strings too! You may also be aware of some liquid products which players may use to clean their strings, most of the time this will be an ethanol or isopropyl solution. Generally speaking, this is ill-advised. As mentioned, anything that touches the strings impacts the sound. Liquid solutions of any type will seep inside the core of the string, making it wet, or worse could cause damage to it. This will further dampen the sound, until the core of the string dries out (which will take a long time). If you clean your strings regularly with a dry, microfibre or cotton cloth, there will be no need for these liquid cleaners, or to buy new sets of strings.