OK, I'm stupid this week. Sorry. Rule of 18 is from Vincenzo Galilei and predates the Varietie of Lute lessons. I'll check dowland's tuning when I get home and see if I can make sense of it as well.
Interestingly, Doctor Oakroot remarked on possible inaccuracies in Dowland's tuning instructions in this list in April of 2006: it might be instructive to pursue that thread, in the mean time! Ray On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Andrew Gibbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > That does sound sensible - and ingenious - but from recollection, the > measurements given by the LSA chart for Dowland's lute gave a narrow > distance between the second and third frets, which didn't sound much > like ET to me - and generally didn't seem to produce a pattern of > proportionally reduced distances between the frets that I imagine you > would get from such a system. Any ideas where I went wrong? > > Andrew > > > On 3 Oct 2008, at 13:45, William Brohinsky wrote: > >> Actually, Dowland's tuning is quite sensible. The rule of 18 sets a >> lute (in theory, neglecting string stretch caused by sideways >> displacement at the finger and fret) to very-nearly equal temperament. >> Apparently, the stretch added by actually fingering the strings brings >> it very very close. > > .. > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
