In a message dated 3/18/2006 12:31:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
--- Stuart Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > those very high passages in Spinacino would > suddenly go into oud mode? disaster! would sound like the instrument had suddenly lost its voice. even with tie-on frets, "plucking" an oud produces a mediocre sound - nothing as rich and resonate as when picked. without plectrum, those very early, "oudy" looking lutes - fret-less or otherwise - must have sounded pretty piano. if tie-on frets were preferred to fixed because they offered variable intonation, presumably, the little "stack" of frets glued to the face could sometimes be at odds with preceding notes. - bill --------------------------------------- To Bill and Stuart: Actually, this brings up an interesting point. I had my six course lute made by Grant Tomlinson intentionally leaving off the body frets. Very quickly I have become used to fingering the notes by the sense of the location for finger placement (and intonation by ear). By angling my fingertips as perpendicular as possible and also sharply plucking the string closer to the bridge, it is capable of a quite a nice and loud sound production. The difference in sound between fretless on the soundboard and the tied frets (it goes up to the eighth fret on my lute, although one of my other six course lutes has nine tied frets) is quite attractive once you get used to it (for ex. in the Dalza pavana alla venetiana in "G major" when the melody leaps up an octave you suddenly have to have to land on the invisible fret 12 and it is exciting for both the player and the audience, too). I had my lute radiographed at the neck join area and discovered that a short vertical bar is glued under the soundboard where these notes are fingered. This explains, too, why my lute is loud in this range. Kenneth Be -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
