I agree with David. However, from the dimmest corner of my memory bank,
I think Mersenne (or someone else!) indicated the bass strings should
have a sustain of 20 or so heartbeats [forgive me if I am getting this
all wrong!]. How long that might be depends on whether you are playing
a gigue or a sarabande...but my heart, that is a LONG sustain.
Anyone got chapter and verse for the quotation?
Rob
On 30 August 2011 09:38, David van Ooijen <[1]davidvanooi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On 30 August 2011 10:27, andy butler <[2]akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> Beginner's questions.
>
> Is the superiority of gut down to the shorter sustain time
> that someone mentioned earlier?
>
> Is string damping really unpopular? (unnecessary?)
No such thing as a beginner's question.
Superiority is not a word I would use for gut, as gut strings are
imprefect in many ways. Another level, their imperfectiong makes me
like the sound better, they're more insteresting than bland and
boring
synthetics (and there's the whole argument of why bother to play an
'early' instrument when using 'modern' strings to produce the sound,
but I'll happily leave that to another discussion).
Shorter sustain in extended basses is a happy side effect of gut,
making damping of said basses unneccecary. I feel we can get an idea
of the expected sustain from the music, and to my feeling a shorter
sustain than metal-wound basses is called for in especially Baroque
lute music. A 'gut' feeling, if you like. ;-)
David
--
*******************************
David van Ooijen
[3]davidvanooi...@gmail.com
[4]www.davidvanooijen.nl
*******************************
To get on or off this list see list information at
[5]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com
2. mailto:akbut...@tiscali.co.uk
3. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com
4. http://www.davidvanooijen.nl/
5. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
