ManyOnline Violin
Touch the strings or use your keyboard. Bow or pluck, slide between notes, play double stops — with a modelled bowed string and natural vibrato.
How to play
With your fingers
Touch a string where a finger would stop it: the note sounds and the bow draws it for you. Slide along the string to glide to another note — the way violinists play slides and the gamakas of Indian music. Put two fingers on two strings for a double stop. Tap past the end of the fingerboard, over the bow, for the open strings.
On one string the finger nearest the bridge sounds, as on a real violin — lift it and the finger behind it takes over.
With the keyboard
Piano rows: Z X C V B N M , . / are the white notes from G3, with S D G H K L ; as the black notes between them; Q W E R T Y U I O P [ ] go on from C5 with the number keys as their black notes.
Violin strings: each row of keys is a string — numbers E, Q row A, A row D, Z row G — and each key along the row is one semitone up the string.
Hold a key and press the next to slur (one bow); let go between notes for separate bows. Press two keys together for a double stop. Hold Shift for an accent.
How the sound is made
Nothing here is a recording. Each of the four strings is a physical model of a bowed string: the bow's rosined hair grips the string, carries it along, and lets it snap back once every vibration — the stick-and-slip that makes a violin sing. How fast the bow moves, how much weight is on it and how close it plays to the bridge change the tone the way they do on a real instrument: quiet notes are played nearer the fingerboard and sound sweeter, loud ones nearer the bridge and sound brighter.
The strings then pass through a model of the violin's body — the air resonance near 275 Hz, the two great wood resonances around 470 and 550 Hz that give the violin its warmth, and hundreds of smaller ones up to the bright "bridge hill" near 2.5 kHz — and into a concert hall. The four strings share one bridge, so open strings ring in sympathy with the notes you play, just as they do on a violin.
Questions
Is this online violin free?
Yes — completely free, with no sign-up and nothing to download. It runs in your browser.
Can I play it on a phone or tablet?
Yes. Touch the strings to play, slide to glide, use two fingers for double stops. Turn the phone sideways and press Full screen for the longest strings. Turn off the silent switch on an iPhone if you hear nothing.
What are the lines on the fingerboard?
Beginner's tapes: where the first, second, third and fourth fingers go in first position, as teachers mark a new player's violin. The faint dots along the edges mark every semitone. Hide the tapes in Settings.
Why does a note take a moment to start?
A bowed note builds up as the bow catches the string — about a twentieth of a second, as on a real violin. For a quicker, harder start, hold Shift (an accent) or turn the loudness up.
What tuning does it use?
The standard violin tuning in fifths: G3, D4, A4 and E5, with A4 at 440 Hz. You can change A4 between 430 and 446 Hz in Settings to match a piano or an orchestra.