Good morning all, I have a string question, not related to type. I have been mostly working with my 8c and in the course of preparing for a concert have decided that the 6c would be better suited. I have not used this one very much as I usually play in a broken consort and the 8c provides good continuo against the recorders. But this upcoming gig will be solo background played against a dramatic monologue. That's the background and the whys and wherefores of the choice of going to the 6c.
In the course of sitting down with this lute I have had some trouble with the 4th course. I had strung this in octaves and have discovered that when making certain chords I end up muting the entire course or just the lower, thicker string of the pair. So I have just this morning re-strung the higher with a matching lower string making the course unison instead of octaves. My questions are thus; 1) What is period, mid-16th century practice for stringing the 4th course of a 6c lute? Unison or octave? 2) What is the general preference among you all when playing on a 6c lute (or I suppose any lute in general)? And now a follow on question about the lute itself. I have noticed the few six course lutes I've seen have very narrow necks. I must assume that, since the makers of these have studied the extant lutes in museums, that this was the norm. However, I find the neck even thinner than my folk guitar and though I have small hands I sometimes feel my fingers are cramped together on the neck making it difficult to move smoothly from one progression to the next. The questions here are; 3) Have any of you here experienced this, especially those of you with larger hands? How did you compensate? 4) Have any of you ever commissioned or built a 6c lute with a slightly wider neck and could this have been done in period? On the latter half of that question I suppose one could assume that since most instruments were made to order this could be done. But conversely one can assume that most of the famous luthiers (Tieffenbrucher, Venere, et. al.) had shops filled with apprentices to mass produce to a standard model. It's an interesting question and I look forward to your thoughts on this. Regards, Craig To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
