We seem to be at cross purposes: what I call 'pulling it (the string)
sideways' is what you, I think, call 'bending'.
MH
--- On Thu, 19/3/09, William Brohinsky <tiorbin...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: William Brohinsky <tiorbin...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: String depression
To: "Martyn Hodgson" <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: "lute mailing list list" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>, "Lex van
Sante" <lvansa...@wanadoo.nl>
Date: Thursday, 19 March, 2009, 2:04 PM
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 4:00 AM, Martyn Hodgson
<[1]hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Perhaps you are, in practice, actually pulling it sideways which is
the
> usual way of raising the pitch as, indeed, someone else has already
> mentioned. Sideways movement is effectively independent of fret
size
> which is the point of discussion.
>
There is no reason to suspect that pulling and pushing strings to
change pitch involve any lateral movement at all, regardless of now
"usual" it may be. This is an historical approach to adjusting pitch,
and is described in period sources, none of which do I have at hand
right now. The pull or push is axial, may have a minute effect between
the finger and fingerboard friction is you're actually pushing the
string that far (which would infer an even more minute change in
tension due to the twist around the center of rotation) but generally
the finger doesn't push hard against the fingerboard when pushing or
pulling axially for pitch.
I use the technique on viol, lute and even guitar (nylon:mostly, but
it even works on that pesky bottom string on the cheap acoustic, which
is so sharp at the third fret that it makes my ears melt!)
It is quite different from bending strings, which involves lateral
motion and ocasionally lateral motion at two points.
Ray
--
References
1. http://uk.mc263.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk
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