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 family a relationship to the viol family. They point to the internal construction of the double bass, which includes a sound post and bass bar like other violin family instruments as a more weighty piece of evidence than the external features. Its origins aside, it has historically been used as the lowest member of the violin family. All string instruments share similar form, parts, construction and function, and the viols bear a particularly close resemblance to the violin family. However, instruments in the violin family are set apart from viols by similarities in shape, tuning practice and history. Violin family instruments