On Wed, 20 Jul 2011, Suzanne Angevine wrote: > >> The strings of my sixth and seventh courses collide, unless I play them >> very softly. Am I the problem, or the strings, or the distance between >> them? > > I have this problem on my 10 course especially. It is less well set up > generally than my 8 course, which doesn't give me this trouble, so the advice > of Eugene and Roman are suggestions about fixing the set up. But I also > observe for myself that technique has a lot to do with it. If I get too > energetic in my playing the twanging can get rather bad. But it also has > something to do with the angle of attack of the thumb. You might play around > with that idea and see if that's part of your situation before making a lot > of modifications to the set up. Just a thought.
Yes, you are right, I've noticed that technique makes some, but not enough of a difference, as it must: if the strings vibrate in the plane of the two courses the problem is at it worst. The collisionless ideal is vibration in the perpendicular plane, but that sounds like an impossibility for a single stroke. My question was really how far can I push technique before I take the instrument in for surgery as suggested Eugene and Roman. The lute is an archlute made by Joel van Lennep, who knows what he does, which strongly suggests that I am the problem or maybe the strings. I think that I observed that old strings that have stretched unevenly tend to vibrate with an amplitude that varies along the string. They might locally exceed the collision limit. That effect may very well be a figment of my imagination, which would explain why it has not yet come up as a reply to my question :-) Peter. > > Suzanne the next auto-quote is: Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. (Howard Zinn) /\/\ Peter Nightingale Telephone (401) 874-5882 Department of Physics, East Hall Fax (401) 874-2380 University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881 To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
