I agree with the rare and bare idea of vibrato on lute. My vibrato technique on lute came with me from guitar. I have a tendency to pull the strings up and down across the fret but very fast, a technique I learned from a now dead British Blues guitarist called Paul Kossoff. I also find that vibrato is a sure fire quick way to put your lute out of tune.
N. -----Original Message----- From: David Tayler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 17 February 2008 21:17 To: lute-cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [LUTE] Re: vibrato If you think of the vibrato as a trill, these ornaments sound and play not only very differently on different lutes, but also vary with the strings and tensions used. My very thin top lutes generally play the trill and vibrato better, but I'm sure the answer has to do with bridge mass and a number of other factors. I'm sure thicker topped lutes could play these ornaments as well, I just haven't seen it in practice as much. The energy generated is pretty small, so the lute has to be responsive. My experience is also that gut strings produce markedly better vibrato and trills than other strings, unless you use very heavy single strings (more of a modern sound). Lastly, the spacing between the unison pairs slightly affects the sound. I use a kind of vibrato forward motion, like a single trill, to pull the fifth in tune on the scond fret. This allows the second fret to be slightly lower. When using vibrato, my rule is "rare and bare", eg, not often and as more of an impression of sound than a wobble. That's the way I like it in voice as well, but there are ceratinly those of the "wobble and gobble" camp. dt At 12:08 PM 2/17/2008, you wrote: >Some fretted-instrument players produce vibrato by wobbling >the finger along the string (ie, towards the nut, towards >the bridge, and then back toward the nut). > >Do lutes vary in their responsiveness to this? In other words, >given the same finger movement, might one lute produce a strong vibrato >and another lute barely enough vibrato to hear? > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
