Hello everyone,

Today I’m doing a short video on how and why to put fingering tapes on your violin.

Many people who first learn the violin wonder why it does not have frets, especially guitar players. There are a lot of reasons why violins do not have frets, and I won’t go into that in this post but don’t “fret” Haha.. because you do not need them! If you practice putting your fingers in the right spot enough times, your body will remember where to put your fingers, and your ear will help you adjust them so your pitch will be great!

If you are just starting out, I suggest using tapes at first.

The biggest benefit of installing tapes is:

Much of learning the violin is “muscle memory.” Your body simply remembers where to place the fingers because you’ve placed them in the same spot so many times. Therefore, it’s VERY important to be consistent in your placement. Tapes will help tremendously with this.

However, there is a danger in using tapes too much. It’s important that you do not become completely dependent on the tapes. It is important to start removing them as soon as you can. You do not want to find your self in the position where you are just staring at the tapes constantly. I suggest you play a scale or passage in your music looking at the tapes. Then play the exact same scale or pass with without looking at the tapes because you want to train your EAR not your EYES. Therefore, remember a few things:

1. Tapes are very helpful in the beginning stages of learning the violin because they will help you with consistency in finger placement, which trades your muscle memory.
2. It’s important to remember that your primary goal is to trade your ears and not your eyes.
3. Remove the tape as soon as you can, so you are training your ears and not your eyes.

Think of tape on your fingerboard like training wheels on a bicycle. You’d never leave training wheels on a bicycle indefinitely, and when you take the wheels off, you will ultimately be able to do much more with the violin after the tape is gone because you will develop the skills necessary to become a great violinist!

You can use a measuring tape for the correct positioning, or you can play the pitch on a keyboard and match it with your finger and then put the tape in the correct place. The measuring tape method is not very accurate because all violins have differing string lengths (length of string from nut to bridge). Therefore, the most accurate way is to use your ear and match a pitch played on a separate device.