On Mar 25, 2008, at 6:28 AM, William Brohinsky wrote: > I seek advice and help: On a student's budget, is there a source > for scale > and chord studies, the basics that would make the relations of the > strings > make more sense to someone who has been linear-all-his-life?
Nigel North's book Continuo Playing has about 40 pages specifically devoted to the theorbo, including chord charts, exercises, and illustrative pieces, including the Kapsberger Toccata Arpeggiata in parallel original tablature and figured bass. The solos are in either French or Italian tab, as they were written originally. The chord charts and exercises are in French tab. It will also give you an idea of what the useful original sources are. There's a Minkoff facsimile of Grenerin's Livre de Theorbe (1668), which consists mostly of translating figured bass into French tab chords, but beware: Grenerin writes as if the re-entrant tuning does not exist. There are PDFs of French theorbo sources (the Hurel Ms, for example) on the web. > Any advice for > learning Italian tab for someone used to french tab? I've found > that the > physical relation between the strings (high pitched string towards > gravity) > and Italian tab (high string notated 'down') does me no good. Just do it. The only way to learn Italian tab is to play Italian tab. It isn't intrinsically any more difficult than French tab. It's probably a mistake to try learning it at the same time you're trying to learn a new tuning. You should have your brain in one frying pan at a time. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
