How to put fingerboard tapes on your instrument

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To play in tune as a beginner, it is really helpful to have tapes on your fingerboard. If you have a teacher, he or she probably already put some on your fingerboard, but if you don’t, you can put them on for yourself. The following video shows you how to do it with a tuner that shows you when the note is in tune. The next video I do will show how to do it with a tuner that plays the sounds for you.

Some people have asked me to give measurements to figure out where to put the tapes. This might be easier, but given slight differences in string lengths from instrument to instrument, the tapes may end up just a little bit off. If you would like to try doing that, here are the measurements for a few instruments:

The numbers are how many inches you should measure from the nut (the end of the vibrating part of the string.)

Full size violin or 14 inch viola:
tape 1: 1 5/16 (3.5cm)
tape 2: 2 1/2 (6.6 cm)
tape 3: 3 1/16 (8 cm)
tape 4: 4 1/16 (10.7 cm)

3/4 violin or 13 inch viola:
tape 1: 1 1/4 (3.3 cm)
tape 2: 2 7/16 (6.2 cm)
tape 3: 3 (7.6 cm)
tape 4: 3 15/16 (10 cm)

16 inch viola:
tape 1: 1 1/2
tape 2: 2 7/8
tape 3: 3 9/16
tape 4: 4 11/16

15 inch viola:
tape 1: 1 7/16
tape 2: 2 13/16
tape 3: 3 7/16
tape 4: 4 9/16

3/4 size cello:
tape 1: 2 7/8
tape 2: 4 5/8
tape 3: 5 3/4
tape 4: 8 1/16