Cross tuning if played in regular tuning, while the sounded pitch is altered. Cross tuning is commonly used on the fiddle in folk music of Appalachia, the southern United States and Scandinavia. The fiddle may be re-tuned in any number of ways in these musical idioms, but there are two common re-tunings. While the standard tuning for open strings of the violin is GDAE—with the G being the tuning of the lowest-pitched string and the E being the tuning for the highest-pitched string—fiddlers playing tunes in the key of D major sometimes employ a tuning of ADAE. In this tuning the open
Violin give the benefit of being less intrusive than a shift or string crossing. The lowest position on the violin is referred to as "half position". In this position the first finger is on a "low first position" note, e.g. B on the A string, and the fourth finger is in a downward extension from its regular position, e.g. D on the A string, with the other two fingers placed in between as required. As the position of the thumb is typically the same in "half position" as in first position, it is better thought of as a backwards extension of