-----Original Message----- From: Tim Beasley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Apr 2, 2005 5:35 PM To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: Newbie Question #2
Thanks all for a lot of great advice. It's greatly appreciated. I've (obviously) been doing a bit of reading. One luthier's webpage I ran across pointed out that 6-course Renaissance music doesn't suffer horribly on 7/8-course lutes, but that one should never even think of playing music intended for 6-course lute on a 10-course instrument. My question is: Why not? (Assuming the first six courses are tuned appropriately.) ++ For practice purposes, you could but the results will not be ideal. This question came up on the internet lute society list as well. The argument has been that the 6c lutes are designed especially to for good sound quality in the range available on the 6c lute whereas the 10c lute is designed for a lower range. With 10 courses, when you play on the upper six courses you may get some sympathetic vibrations from the overtones of the lower courses that maybe you don't want. This leads to nonuniform sound quality in volume. The strings that do not have resonant overtones with the bass courses may not sound as loud and maybe you ' would rather emphasize them or have a uniform volume. On a 6c lute, you can play the lowest course without worrying about invoking these vibrations or hiting course number 7 by accident because it doesn't exist. Anyway, this has been the argument, but I'm not sure it is a show stopper, depending on why you want to play the lute. I have two 8c ren lutes and there are times when I would like to have 1 or two additional courses. ++You can think of the courses on a lute like tools in a toolkit. If all you need are a few tools (e.g. 6 courses), why carry a large toolkit (10c) to do a job that requires only a small one? And would it be any different if I "accidentally" didn't bother to string the lower courses? ++You would be missing the advantages of a 10c lute. It might be OK for practice. It would be like painting your gold medal flat black. I can see how it may not be desirable to go the other way--play X-course music on 6-course instruments. ++You can come up with 6c versions of music written for 10c but you will need to make some compromises and naturally you will need to find another way to play it. It will be harder to play and it won't sound as good. But since my having multiple lutes is not a possibility in the near, intermediate, and probably even long-term future, I'm trying to find a compromise that'll maximize the music I could play, without doing undue violence to the musical text itself. ++What kind of music do you want to play? (Allow a me brief note on why lutes aren't popular in this day and age. Instruments are expensive and fragile. ++Some of them are cheap. The problems are peg tuning, Repertoire is in a fairly unfamiliar idiom. ++With exposure to more lute music this problem goes away. I was originally put off guitar by the (relative non-)complexity of having to choose 650 mm or 640 mm scale length, cedar/spruce top, "country" vs. classical, and choice of back/side wood. There's no decent lute tutor that I can find. ++There are books available on eBay. You can order very good texts from various companies. I don't have time to write down all the information, but email me if you want me to dig it up later. I have five ren lute books, two in Italian and three in English. The instrument doesn't receive airplay or have superstars prancing on stage--hunk, punk, or babe, variously. ++Thank God! Can you imagine Paul Odette "prancing" around with a lute on stage? You can play or prance but not simultaneously. And, as Segovia is reported to have said, We live in a noisy age.) Tim B. Best Marion To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
