mouth harp is (was) used a lot down south (sicily) where it's called a "spaccapensiero" or "thought breaker." i imagine an evening of "boing-boing" would disturb anyone's tranquility. bad karma days, endured with equanimity and grace, bring good karma days ... sort of a zen/zwingli metaphysical melange to help bide you over the bumpy bits. - bill LGS-Europe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Today was the concert with the music by Albrechtsberger for strings, mouth harp and mandora. It was fun! The instrument is actually quite expressive and sensitive; I was positively impressed. Four instruments were needed for this one concerto. Each mouth harp is tuned, and the player can play only the harmonics. He has to be quite virtuosic in changing instruments to accomplish it all.
On another note, I had a bad kharma day, however. The weather has been especially hot around here lately, far into the 30's (celcius). Yesterday I changed my first string - which had served me well for many weeks - to have a nice new one for the concert. The concerthall was airconditioned and quite drafty. So today imy first string broke before I could play anything in rehearsal. I put on a new one, which broke as well. The next one lasted the rehearsal, but broke back stage five minutes before I had to play. I had run out of 0.42, so I put on a 0.44. This one was almost to short, but with some trickery I managed to put it on. Playing with a capodastro made changing strings, and tuning afterwards, a bit more complicated. Having really thick gut basses and thin octave strings makes a capo very tricky. I tune between movements and in tacet parts wit an electronic tuner. Tuning was reasonably ok, I think. I was planning to finish off my old stock of Kürschners, the thin ones tend to break quite unannouned, but that I would do it so quick was a bit of a surprise. It's nice, living on the edge ... And a note on historical amplification: both the mouth harp and the lute were amplified. It was a big hall. David **************************** David van Ooijen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.davidvanooijen.nl **************************** To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal --
