OK, I played violin in church yesterday - descants for a few congregational hymns, and a solo for the offertory. The organ was an old pump organ used once a year; it was reasonably in tune with itself, but nowhere near concert pitch.

So I matched my E, A, and D strings to the pump organ, but I didn't bother adjusting my G string because I wasn't planning to use it for anything that day and we were running low on time.

Then when I did my solo, which was in G, I was quite dissatisfied with it. My intonation seemed to be OK, but the sound just had no richness to it - it was especially noticeable when I played the G on the D string (often) - it just sounded empty somehow, though it had sounded great when I was practicing.

I realized later that the problem was that I hadn't retuned my G string. Because it wasn't the correct interval below my D string, it had no sympathy with what I was playing, and it really did make a big difference to the sound.

String players, learn from my mistake: tune all your strings before playing, even if you know you aren't going to use one of them.

It's such a simple thing in retrospect, but I missed it, so I offer the story here in the hopes that someone will profit from it.

Anyone else have a cautionary example to share?

Marion