I cannot agree more. The only objection I would have to Ariel's point is that gut gives a different feeling for the player. When playing gut I feel a bit as if the fingers would be glued to the string I am trying to plug while gut players don't like the feeling of syntetic materials.
Best wishes Thomas -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: ariel abramovich [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Montag, 7. August 2006 10:41 An: Lutenet Betreff: [LUTE] Re: (was) Strings for chittarone Hi all, we've been in the subject before, many times. As most of you, I've heard people playing lutes strung in all sort of materials, both in concerts and recordings, with good and bad instruments. I've also used both and had the chance to experiment a bit. There's no point in arguing about taste but there're a couple of objective things: Most professional players don't use gut while playing concerts, because of intonation and other practical reasons. Audience do suffer our tuning problems more than we do (and more than what we think). They might not exactly know what's going on, but certainly perceive that something sounds simply bad, and that can be distracting and frustrating. On the other hand, in a modern (big) concert hall would be very difficult to tell whether you're using gut or synthetic, ever for someone who's trained. You're lucky if they can hear you. It is, at the end, a matter of values. More important to me, the string material is only a small fraction of the whole tone production process. Making a flexible sound (I wouldn't, again, say good or bad) takes years of work and daily practice, and many people wouldn't want to "waist" time doing that (for instances, some students just don't get the point). Why bothering then in spending absurd amounts of money in strings if the sounds is mainly in your fingers? I remember when I met Paul O' Dette back in 1995, and took for my lesson a very simple lute built in Buenos Aires that I played back then. No surprises here, he played and sounded just like PO'D, there was no sings of a poor instrument anymore. The very same experience when I've studied with Hoppy, or with Eugène Ferré: sound quality wasn't determined by the tool's quality (nor by the strings). Synthetic or gut doesn't really get us closer or further away from Francesco, Dowland or Narváez and Newsidler. Understanding of the language, our skills with the instruments and inspiration does it, in my opinion. Apart from that, not all modern lutes are made for gut. Many modern makers test and conceive their instruments with/for synthetic and certainly don't have a gut sound in mind, for what strings material becomes something relative here. Again in a personal terrain, the best lute concerts and recordings I've heard were performed with synthetic, and by any chance I felt I was missing something. Gut strings have very nice qualities, but I wouldn't exaggerate their importance. Saludos, Ariel. > Chris > >> about gut strings in the past: our gut is _not_ "their >> gut." (i.e. the exact same type of string that was >> made back in the day.) Therefore, whatever you decide > > I'd say that the gut strings of all the different gut string makers of > today, with their variety of products with quite different > characteristics and sound, all come closer to a sound a lute player of > old had with his variety of gut strings available to him, closer than > a modern string of uniform material. Gut is a complex material > resulting in a complex sound. No two strings are the same, such a > baroque concept! Baroque art is like custard with lumps, not processed > yoghurt with artificial vanilla flavour. All nylgut is nylgut, all > carbon is carbon, all nylon is nylon. How can you > enter a world of complex 'organic' sounds with a uniform 'synthetic' > sound? > A good wine is not the same as a cheap softdrink, but if you drink the > latter often enough, you might start to like it. I agree that gut (basses > especially) might be an aquired taste, but aren't those the most > enjoyable? > I like gut strings for all the reasons stated above, not because they are > exactly the same as the strings Francesco or Dowland had. But at the same > time I am convinced that playing on non-gut strings will certainly get me > further away from a sound of Francesco or Dowland. > > Why is it that lute players must be told their instruments were made > for > gut > strings? Isn't it obvious? > > David > > > **************************** > David van Ooijen > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.davidvanooijen.nl > **************************** > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
