Good point, Alexander. There could easily be an aesthetic point to a
slight bray and I confess to enjoying this aspect of double frets.
Although unrelated to renaissance music as we know it, many Indian
instruments like the vina, sitar and tamboura have a braying mechanism
just north of the bridge. A clear ringing string is avoided in favor
of a buzz that causes the ring to mutate over its timespan. In other
words, a long note changes over its life adding sonic textures outside
the player's control.
Sean
On Feb 19, 2010, at 6:54 AM, alexander wrote:
Well! As the jumping into hot water already started... The double
frets that we know of, came into use at the same period as the bray
harp, and the "bray" attachments in virginals. Again, aesthetics of
the sound, it was considered that a hard object slightly touching
the string near its' cut-off point makes sustain longer, and the
sound, well, more beautiful. When this effect is taken into
consideration and the frets tied with this idea, and the string
tension light enough for it to work, the results can be quite nice.
It is certainly an important mantra: THEY WERE NOT CRAZY, they were
not crazy... alexander r.
Martyn,
The continuing, if strange,
fascination single loops seems to
defy historical evidence and practical
experience.
Time to wake up that sleeping dog! Once again I'll jump into hot
water and point out that the old gut material had quite different
physical properties than our modern reconstructions. This probably
explains Mace's emphasis on stretching frets before putting them on.
Perhaps modern gut is hard/stiff enough to maintain its shape and
allow for single frets. On the other hand, if period gut was sort
of "rubbery," it would therefore need to be doubled up in order to
provide enough of a substantial bump on the neck to effectively
stop a string. This would in turn account for the tiny, tiny
double frets seen in paintings.
Chris - has experience with both double and single frets.
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