Hi- Even with gut strings on say a baroque lute it is still good to damp the strings, otherwise it sounds messy. Also just for articulation. If you listen to the top players of today damping basses is very common. There are different techniques for damping and it soon becomes trivial.
--Sterling From: howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> To: Lute List <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 10:39 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings?damping This discussion would make a lot more sense if posters explained what gut is being compared to. In some cases, it's overwound strings, and in others, it's plain nylon. On Aug 30, 2011, at 5:00 AM, andy butler wrote: > Are there any players who reckon that damping is essential? Tympanists, mostly. It makes the lute vastly more difficult to play: in an ascending passage on the diapasons, the thumb has to make three maneuvers (play note, reach back up to damp it, then move to the next one) instead of one for each note. If you find you need to damp consistently to avoid the sound fogging over, change strings. -- To get on or off this list see list information at [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
